- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
90Brutally honest and brilliantly acted.
-
80As always, Don Cheadle is fantastic, but the film belongs to Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
-
80Honest and moving.
-
80If the cast is distractingly pretty, the performances are also quite fine and, in the case of Gordon-Levitt, exceptional.
-
80Shows more hopelessness than optimism but is never less than honest.
-
80It's without posturing or phony outrage, and offers instead something far more affecting: a deep sense of melancholy. This is the way it is, it says, and not much can be done about it.
-
75This clear-eyed, low-budget drama is populated by troubled teens whose stories aren’t packaged in neat little bows. Their histories are sad, their feelings raw, their futures uncertain.
-
70Often the script (co-written by Michael Bacall, who plays sardonic bipolar rich kid Chad) rings clear with mouths-of-babes declamations that all pained kids spew before downing adulthood's suck-it-up Kool-Aid.
-
67The texture of Manic feels honest and the chemistry of the kids is well observed, but even the modest breakthroughs are dramatic conventions that favor the symbolic over the genuine.
-
63Excellent performances redeem Jordan Melamed's gritty teenage version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
-
60Don Cheadle is wonderful, as always, as the former drug-addict-turned-psychiatrist who worries it's all hopeless but refuses to stop trying. Sounds clichéd, perhaps, but for the most part it works, thanks to piercingly authentic performances.
-
58There's something already exhausted, however, in the intrusively gauzy, wobbly, blurry, zoomy digital-video look of the piece.
-
50If the movie is not original, at least it's a showcase for the actors and writers. It does not speak as well, alas, for director Jordan Melamed and his cinematographer, Nick Hay.
-
50Searching for a documentary feel, the camera here is so shaky that you cling to the arms of your chair lest you pitch into the next row.
-
50Buoyed by some sensitive performances and nearly tanked by insensitive filming.
-
50The film doesn't really go anywhere, other than outside for endless games of basketball, and the group-therapy environment allows for far too many young-actor monologues.
-
50Really, we'd rather just watch a good documentary about the subject. And as the camera flings around, we occasionally forget about what could help the teens and think more about what could help the director: How about a tripod?
-
40Melamed's debut film, Manic, set in a juvenile mental institution, has all the uncertainties of a first run-through.
-
40The camera work is so self-conscious and so intrusive that it consistently overrides our interest in the characters and their individual dramas.
-
25What really hurts is the movie's shallow screenwriting, self-indulgent acting, and woozy camerawork.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 8 out of 8
-
Mixed: 0 out of 8
-
Negative: 0 out of 8
-
6
-
10