| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
A pulsating snapshot of America caught in a mad, liberating identity crisis.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The agony of invention is there on the screen.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
The story is a mess, as usual with Toback's movies, but intricacies of contemporary urban culture are vividly illuminated by his insistence on blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Toback presents specific characters dealing with specific problems and, through their stories, somehow manages to take the temperature of the times.
|
| 70 |
Dallas Observer
Immediately disarming for its candor, verve, and sheer nerve.
|
| 70 |
Slate
Gleefully pushes everyone's buttons...and that manages to exploit our own racial discomfort and envy in ways that leave us hungry for more.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Fascinating, perplexing, amusing, and irascible.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
It's another of Mr. Toback's quick-talking autobiographies that, like the best pop, have a clock running on their expiration dates.
|
| 60 |
Rolling Stone
This lively mess proves that when Toback loses his head, he does it with style.
|
| 60 |
Newsweek
Jack Kroll
Maverick moviemaker James Toback has latched on to the most fascinating cultural phenomenon of the American moment.
|
| 60 |
Film.com
Works best as a free-flowing essay.
|
| 60 |
LA Weekly
A sui generis excursion into sex and race that is by turns terrible...and close to divine.
|
| 57 |
Mr. Showbiz
An audacious but underconceived blend of fiction and documentary that questions the idea of race and identity in America.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
At heart a cliché-strewn melodrama about a bunch of white, upper-class Manhattan kids who aspire to ghetto culture.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
There's something deeper at play in the film, something psychologically foul, voyeuristic and personal.
|
| 42 |
Portland Oregonian
Too often monochromatic, programmatic and just plain lost.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
Strident and bombastic.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
The movie is such a mess that it seems to have been assembled from pieces randomly picked from the cutting-room floor.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
When your characters are only skin deep, so is your message.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
Toback's method of presenting the evidence without judgment backfires, finally appearing just as shapeless as the movie's structure.
|
| 38 |
USA Today
Sometimes laughably incoherent.
|
| 30 |
Los Angeles Times
The voyeuristic indulgences of a middle-aged filmmaker playing out his most deep-seated and unresolved sexual fantasies and anxieties.
|
| 25 |
Chicago Tribune
There is really no one to like in this film.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Examiner
Ideological disaster!
|
| 20 |
Village Voice
Peaks with its opening scene.
|
| 20 |
Chicago Reader
An extravagant mess.
|
| 5 |
TNT RoughCut
Pauline Adamek
When worlds collide - people yawn.
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