| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
This is a smart film, told in a minor key, that augurs well for Whaley's directing career.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
Has moments that are haunting, and it stays with you long after the lights have come back up.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
Whaley's self-effacing but strongly etched and wrenchingly effective film.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
One of my favorite U.S. fiction features at 1999's Sundance Festival.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
A poignant, graceful little film.
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
The atmosphere of the movie is dense and unrelieved; it's a heavy role for such a little boy, and some people won't want to watch such a bleak, monster world.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
The movie isn't a day in the park, but it manages to close on an existentially uplifting note.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Has enough simmering beneath its sweaty, grimy and disconsolate surface to be more than just another rite-of-passage missive set in the '70s.
|
| 73 |
Mr. Showbiz
Rarely falters but neither does it ever take flight.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Deftly realist character study.
|
| 70 |
LA Weekly
Whaley successfully balances his scenes on a knife-edge of tenderness and anger that was Truffaut's trademark.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Leads you through a miserable childhood without sentimentality or relief. The effect is torturous.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
A powerful little gem: a little bit of "The Outsiders" (the film's tone is remarkably similar to Coppola's film, minus the airy redemption and golden sunrises), a lot of "The 400 Blows," and a slice of "Radio Flyer" all wrapped up in a dirty black bow.
|
| 63 |
Miami Herald
14-year-old Noah Fleiss gives a performance that's every bit as astonishing as Haley Joel Osment's work in "The Sixth Sense."
|
| 60 |
Film.com
An occasionally powerful, always heartfelt drama.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
In the end, the film feels a little futile; its relentless, one-miserable-note tone is numbing.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
The film belongs to Fleiss, and he makes Joe's inner life so transparent that it's heartbreaking to watch the boy dig himself into a hole.
|
| 60 |
Dallas Observer
Whatever else is weak or indulgent in this fledgling effort -- self-consciousness and a certain grim solemnity come to mind -- it has the jolt of truth about it, like a lot of thinly veiled fiction.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
Jan Stewart
Antisentimental to a fault.
|
| 50 |
The New York Times
Dramatically Joe the King feels unglued, as if crucial sequences had been left on the cutting-room floor.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Too much self-pity.
|
| 50 |
Entertainment Weekly
Bruce Fretts
So willfully bleak and profanity-filled, it could only have been written and directed by an actor.
|
| 30 |
TNT RoughCut
Matt Kelsey
Without any trustworthy characters for young Joe and no actual story development, the movie drags.
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