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Spanking the Monkey
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Metascore
66 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 15 Critics What's this?

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  • Starring: Alberta Watson, Jeremy Davies
  • Summary: A critically acclaimed, outrageously offbeat look at growing up. Looking forward to a prestigious summer internship in Washington, D.C., pre-med college student Raymond (Davies) has his dreams put on hold when he's forced to stay at home caring for his invalid mother (Watson). Constantly harassed by his domineering, traveling salesman father, Raymond struggles to deal with his mother's bed-ridden anxieties and his first, stumbling attempts to romance the naive girl next door. (Image Entertainment)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 15
  3. Negative: 0 out of 15
  1. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Hal Hinson
    90
    A director with a more sensationalistic temperament might have milked this last section of the picture for melodramatic effect, but Russell's direction becomes, if anything, more brisk and more clipped.
  2. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Staff(not credited)
    88
    Unlike so many other recent youth-oriented independent efforts, it takes on difficult, even impossible, issues with genuinely astonishing results.
  3. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    60
    A movie about mother-son incest may sound like a daring writing-directing début, but David O. Russell, the fledgling auteur, stacks the deck like an old sharpie.

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