| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
That's why American Movie cuts so deep: It's about the American dream, about not giving up, about being true to yourself.
|
| 100 |
New York Daily News
Smith's gleeful, touching documentary records the agony and the ecstasy of realizing your dream, and intangible ways that such dreams help keep people alive.
|
| 100 |
TNT RoughCut
Sara Raskin
Near-perfect editing, and cleverly poignant dialogue.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
A very funny, sometimes very sad documentary.
|
| 100 |
Baltimore Sun
A revealing, intimate, quirky and generous portrait of nothing less than the American Dream.
|
| 100 |
Washington Post
As quintessential a story of American ambition as Welles' own "Citizen Kane."
|
| 100 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
The rare documentary that combines a wildly charismatic subject with an elegant structure...not-to-be-missed.
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
Extraordinary.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
Though a little long, the film takes us right inside both the creative impulse and the margins of American life. Its triumph is to show those two things as being deeply, wonderfully connected.
|
| 90 |
LA Weekly
This unassuming, insistently entertaining documentary has the virtue of a great subject.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Russel Smith
A revealing, heart- and mind-engaging insight into a uniquely American character type many of us may have known.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
This thorough original is a wall-to-wall exercise in gallows humor, a movie whose full funny/sad effect doesn't hit until you reflect upon the subject and the cast of characters.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Of all the many documentaries that take you along on a movie shoot, one of my all-time favorites is this delightfully scrappy, sometimes poignant, often hilarious show.
|
| 88 |
San Francisco Examiner
Hysterical-depressing, vividly sobering.
|
| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
But this is pretty honest and true filmmaking, nonetheless; try as you might, you can't detect the leer of the satirist.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
A chronicle of the exasperating circumstances that yield cinema gold -- or lead. It almost doesn't matter which; it's the process that counts here.
|
| 80 |
Mr. Showbiz
Brilliant, mind-boggling.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
Hilarious and often moving.
|
| 80 |
Newsweek
Andrea C. Basora
Like its subject, American Movie works entirely on its own quirky terms.
|
| 80 |
Dallas Observer
Touching, frequently hilarious.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Often coming across as simultaneously out of control and self-possessed, Borchardt can't have been an easy target, but the filmmakers seem to have nailed him.
|
| 80 |
TV Guide
Wildly entertaining and quite poignant.
|
| 80 |
Slate
As I watched American Movie, a lot of it struck me as untranscendent misery. But in hindsight it seems less hopeless.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
A tacit auteur-to-auteur endorsement of the inalienable right to make movies--regardless of talent or sobriety or adult responsibilities--is what gives American Movie its uneasy kick.
|
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Although overly long at 107 minutes, American Movie is an incisive, largely absorbing work and a far more mature effort than Smith's "American Job."
|
| 70 |
Village Voice
Although I don't begrudge Borchardt his year of fame, what he doesn't seem to understand about his exploitation creeps me out.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
It's never entirely clear whether Borchardt is also an object of ridicule for documentarian Chris Smith.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Frequently hilarious, if overlong.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
It seems more a geek show than a slab of marketing wizardry.
|
