| 80 |
Mr. Showbiz
Not all of the jokes hit, but enough of them do that anyone who's ever filed, collated, or played Mixmaster DJ with the transcribing machine will find cathartic giggles in this breakout debut.
|
| 80 |
Rolling Stone
A ragtag charmer. You will laugh.
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| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
A sly and captivating comedy of imaginative leaps and gently orchestrated pandemonium.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
The result is a winning comedy.
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| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
Delivers deliciously low blows at corporate America, office politics and the lengths people will go to avoid work.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
There are a few weak spots -- the ending could have used some fine tuning -- but otherwise its a solid sleeper: unassuming, unexpected and wholly entertaining.
|
| 70 |
Wall Street Journal
The vision of office work that's offered up by Haiku Tunnel is as chilling as it is funny.
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| 70 |
Village Voice
It's unpretentiously low-tech and humorously offbeat. And against all odds, the filmmaker emerges as a star.
|
| 70 |
Salon.com
The charm and the shoddiness of Haiku Tunnel stem from the same source. It's basically a San Francisco underground theater production that somehow escaped onto the movie screen without losing any of its eccentric, insular qualities.
|
| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
They try too hard to be funny. It's hardly a damning fault, but it has a tendency to drown out their satiric observations.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
However refreshing it is to see a movie about the secretary rather than the lawyer -- there is a long wait for the light at the end of the Haiku Tunnel.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
They're a far cry from the Coen brothers, or even the Polish brothers, but Josh and Jacob Kornbluth emerge intact from their first filmmaking venture and score more hits than misses in this comedy.
|
| 60 |
Variety
While it plays more like stage or TV sketch-comedy shtick than film material, this modest, visually unimposing production remains entertaining thanks to its ironic observations and winning sense of folly.
|
| 58 |
Portland Oregonian
Pleasant and light and builds nicely within its own self-circumscribed intent.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Already too long. It makes you want to start moving globs of dirt to tunnel out of the theater as the movie ends with the famous theme to "The Great Escape."
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
A funny movie, but like "Josh" himself, it's too self-absorbed, and maybe too nice, for its own good.
|
| 50 |
New Times (L.A.)
After a few very funny early sequences, tricked up with grotesque, surreal editing and camerawork, the movie gets bogged down a bit during the first third.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
The Kornbluths don't offer much visual style -- the film is as flat and sterile as its corporate environs -- but they build an excruciating tension from Kornbluth's confounding inability to lick a few stamps.
|
| 40 |
Chicago Reader
Some of the gags here are funny, but they aren't executed effectively enough to score.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
No doubt this effort will find its fans, as it should, but there's a lot of lost potential.
|
| 20 |
The New York Times
Can a feature-length movie be built on minutiae like jammed copying machines, unsent business letters and orientation programs for new employees? This innocuous wisp of a film, as weighty as a scrap of fax paper caught in an updraft, suggests that the answer is no.
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| 12 |
New York Post
Amazingly amateurish, the film lands wide of satirical targets that should be impossible to miss.
|
| 10 |
Washington Post
Let's not waste any time: This movie is just awful. Prime problem: Josh Kornbluth, the chubby, wild-haired, bug-eyed star.
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