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90A masterful comedy that will divide audiences, but it left me laughing hysterically. I hope that doesn’t make you think I’m a sick bastard, but if so, piss off.
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90A movie that advances the career of a demonstrably gifted filmmaker, a fearlessly funny movie whose laughs draw blood, a bracingly provocative movie that won't apologize for its bad temper.
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88I saw it a third time. By then I had moved beyond the immediate shock of the material and was able to focus on what a well-made film it was; how concisely Solondz gets the effects he's after.
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80None of this intellectualizing is necessary to the simple enjoyment of Storytelling -- provided the viewer has a taste for the pitch-black humor that emerges when Solondz's camera becomes a veritable blowtorch aimed at humanity's myriad failings.
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75Solondz is a courageous social commentator and a canny provocateur at the same time. He'll never get to Hollywood if he stays on this track, but cinema will be a lot duller if he ever mends his incendiary ways.
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75Cleverly mocks the modern chronicler, raising questions that linger long after the film is finished.
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75Solondz has finally made a movie that isn't just offensive -- it also happens to be good. He's still shouting, still violating our politically correct sensibilities, but the shocks now have thematic purpose. They don't just titillate, they resonate.
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70The leanest and meanest of Solondz's misanthropic comedies, feasts on the anguish of adolescence and confusion of college -- white suburban-style.
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63Almost as uncompromising, and sometimes as funny, as "Dollhouse" or "Happiness."
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63Although Solondz's view is omniscient, as a filmmaker here he condescends to his characters' innocence, ignorance and bigotry, making him guilty of the same narrative crimes.
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60The film is all a little Lit Crit 101, but it's extremely well played and often very funny. But beware: Solondz uses humor as a booby trap, so be careful what you laugh at.
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60Does Solondz feel remorse for libeling his own kind? He might need to if his portraits didn't have the gift of dark wit, the ring of social truth. One makes allowances for a master storyteller.
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50Lack of any real substance.
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50Solondz's refusal to frame his dark, misanthropic impulses with an overriding point-of-view seems a cheap copout for a film whose title proposes that it's about the storytelling process.
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50Solondz should have called this one "So-So Storytelling."
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50An inelegant combination of two unrelated shorts that falls far short of the director's previous work in terms of both thematic content and narrative strength.
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50Newcomers should be advised that this is not an introductory course.
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50Storytelling is no more likely than "Happiness" or "Welcome to the Dollhouse" to resolve the question of whether director Todd Solondz is a serious artist or a nasty little man with a perversely glum view of the universe.
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50The most pleasing paradox in Storytelling -- a determinedly paradoxical and, in spite of much of what I've said here, a genuinely pleasing movie -- is that it sets out to debunk this notion and ends up affirming it.
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Satisfying to the degree that you agree, with Solondz and Thomas Hobbes, that life is on the whole nasty, brutish and short.
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50The lower your expectations, the more you'll enjoy it.
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50Solondz's singular game plan is to dangle profoundly obnoxious caricatures before us, then punish them mercilessly for their stupidity, which is amusing enough if you're in the mood for that sort of thing.
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40Todd Solondz's newest debacle drips with contempt for his audience, his characters and his critics.
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40Twisted and outrageous but ultimately artificial. Albert Brooks did this art-reality thing a lot better years ago in "Real Life," his takeoff on PBS's "An American Family," and was sidesplitting besides.
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40It would be tempting to call Storytelling a narrow and simplistic examination of the creative process, if only Solondz weren't so quick to agree.
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40Less a rounded narrative than a pair of suggestive -- and unresolved -- exercises.
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40A provocative but eventually dislikable two-part film that dares us to dislike it.
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The urge to make viewers squirm is fair enough, but when it runs ahead of the urge to entertain -- when the jokes trail in the wake of the embarrassments -- you can't help leaving the theatre sad and soured. [4 Feb 2002, p. 82]
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25Another mean-spirited black comedy from Todd Solondz, tries even harder than the director's two earlier films to shock and outrage -- but the overall effect of his sophomoric excess is tiresome and dull, like watching someone else's 2-year-old act out for the 50th time.
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25Solondz is still stuck in an adenoidal whine.
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16While there are maybe two moments of genuinely clever humor, Storytelling is the work of a previously promising filmmaker who, having no new ideas, has morphed into a sniggering schoolboy intent upon being mean.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 13
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Mixed: 0 out of 13
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Negative: 2 out of 13
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DavidC.7
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SteveG.8