| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Take a chance on Gerry. It's only a movie, and you'll get out alive no matter what happens on the screen. You might even find you've had a rare adventure.
|
| 100 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Conceptually bold and rapturously beautiful Gerry, a minimalist landscape film that's unlike anything on the American independent scene.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The movie is on some level a stunt, but it has the fervent, sun-dazed pull of an authentic experience unfolding in real time, with glints of drama, comedy, and terror mixed into the almost-but-not-quite tedium.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Staff (Not credited)
Like the man to whom this film is dedicated, Ken Kesey, Gerry just wants to go "further."
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Watching Gus Van Sant's Gerry is the cinematic equivalent of watching paint dry. I mean that as high praise.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Casual moviegoers may enjoy it, too, if they follow a simple rule: Stop looking for the way out and let yourself get lost.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
About as non-narrative a film as you're likely to see in commercial theaters. This makes it a curiosity and, less charitably, something of a gimmick, but mostly it makes it a challenge.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
With all its quirks, Gerry seeps into your pores like the wind-whipped sand that stings the faces of these disoriented hikers.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Somewhere between profound and ludicrous, kind of like a cross between "Waiting for Godot" and "Dude, Where's My Car?"
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The movie is so gloriously bloody-minded, so perverse in its obstinacy, that it rises to a kind of mad purity. The longer the movie ran, the less I liked it and the more I admired it.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
For those with the patience to latch onto Van Sant's slow, methodical groove. It's worth trying.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
The result is like a "Waiting for Godot" for the video-game generation.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
It's certainly a provocation, with a few funny moments, and for my money it's less phony and offensive than "Finding Forrester."
|
| 70 |
Slate
David Edelstein
In some strange way, I admire the enterprise. Like his Gerrys, Van Sant doesn't seem to know where he's going to wind up when he embarks on these journeys. The ether that seeps into his head might be the price we have to pay for his keeping his mind so open.
|
| 70 |
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
There's elegance and grace here, fostering an opportunity to reflect upon why men get so dutiful about being down. It's worth the hike.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
A gorgeously shot endurance test that is impossible to get through on anything less than a full night's sleep and a double shot of espresso.
|
| 50 |
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
A wee Boy Scout would have done far better in the wilds. It’s tough to think "Waiting for Godot" when what you’re watching is closer to "Dumb & Dumber."
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Gerry isn't much of anything, and doesn't claim to be. It's a movie stripped of its movieness.
|
| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
If it were a landscape painting, Gerry would deserve a place in the National Gallery. But as a movie...deserves its own wing in The Old Curiosity Shop.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
John Powers
Van Sant ultimately reveals so little about this odd couple that we frankly don't give a damn what happens to them. Nor, apparently, does he.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Long takes do not a masterpiece make, and the suspicion that the whole thing is a lark is only bolstered by Damon and Affleck's inability to contain their giggles.
|
| 40 |
Film Threat
Merle Bertrand
For the most part, Gerry is a lot of self-indulgent baloney.
|
| 40 |
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Exercise in existential tedium that it is, Gerry isn't without devotees.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Gerry moves slowly and deliberately, like a torture technique, leaving us feeling as dry and dusty and lost as its two characters.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
In the end, Gerry is beyond the simple question of pleasure. Seeing it may be no fun at all, but then discomfort is part of the price one pays in learning.
|
| 30 |
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Defiantly uncommunicative picture.
|
| 30 |
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
Gerry is all manner without any trace of depth.
|
| 25 |
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
The desert is clean in Gerry, but it's also empty.
|
| 25 |
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Strands Matt Damon and Casey Affleck (both named Gerry) in a desert with little to say and do except lose themselves in an existential wasteland of doomed beauty.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
The most screamingly obvious reaction to Gerry is: what a load of pseudo-arty you-know-what.
|
| 0 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Gerry is ragingly bad art that contributes to a definition of independent film as something no one would want to sit through.
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