Metacritic Film

My Kid Could Paint That

Starring Amir Bar-Lev, Anthony Brunelli, Elizabeth Cohen, Michael Kimmelman, Laura Olmstead, Mark Olmstead, and Marla Olmstead

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language

Sony Pictures Classics
Documentary
82 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters October 5, 2007

In the span of only a few months, 4-year-old Marla Olmstead rocketed from total obscurity into international renown – and sold over $300,000 dollars worth of paintings. She was compared to Kandinsky and Pollock, and called “a budding Picasso.” But not all of the attention was positive. From the beginning, many faulted her parents for exposing Marla to the glare of the media and accused the couple of exploiting their daughter for financial gain. Others felt her work was, in fact, comparable to the great Abstract Expressionists – but saw this as emblematic of the meaninglessness of Modern Art. And then, five months into Marla’s new life as a celebrity and just short of her fifth birthday, a bombshell dropped. CBS’ 60 Minutes aired an exposé suggesting strongly that the paintings were painted by her father, himself an amateur painter. As quickly as the public built Marla up, they tore her down. The Olmsteads were barraged with hate mail, ostracized around town, sales of the paintings dried up, and Marla’s art dealer considered moving out of Binghamton. Embattled, the Olmsteads turned to the filmmaker to clear their name. Torn between his own responsibility as a journalist and the family’s desire to see their integrity restored, the director finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a situation that can’t possibly end well for him and them, and could easily end badly for both. (Sony Classics)

DIRECTED BY
Amir Bar-Lev

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

74 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Chicago Tribune
It is a wonder, marked by a sense of wondrous skepticism that has nothing to do with cynicism.
100 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It's a dissection of how the media found and fed and nurtured the story in their insatiable need for content to fill their news hours and talk shows, how it just as quickly turned on them and transformed the story from celebration to vilification, and how the public turned right along with them.
100 Christian Science Monitor
Amir Bar-Lev's documentary is fascinating on all kinds of levels: as a movie about the nature of art, the lure and pitfalls of celebrity, and the complicated conundrums of parenting.
91 Entertainment Weekly
Amir Bar-Lev's engrossing film is as much about the stubborn ambiguities of art, truth, meaning, and relationships as it is about the authenticity of the Olmstead oeuvre.
91 The Onion (A.V. Club)
When others can't see what parents see, there's an inescapable ache. As much as anything, My Kid Could Paint That is about that ache.
90 Film Threat Sally Foster
Aside from being a captivating and highly interesting film, Bar-Lev's My Kid Could Paint That is also something extremely rare – a piece of honest journalism.
88 TV Guide
Bar-Lev also explores the freakish popular appeal of child prodigies, the family dynamics that come into play when a child's celebrity and earning capacity overshadows the adults', and the remarkably conflicted and contradictory admissions drawn from Brunelli about Marla's work.
88 Philadelphia Inquirer
Features entertainingly brainy musings from New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman, and comments from child psychologists, friends and Marla collectors.
83 Portland Oregonian
The result is a true conundrum: You can't say for sure if a scam is in play or if a genuine genius is being smeared. And the brilliance of the film is that it doesn't let you feel secure in choosing either side.
80 Dallas Observer
My Kid Could Paint That's about art—and it IS art, among the best documentaries ever made about that elusive process of manufacturing something out of nothing. But it's also a must-see for every single parent who believes their children are special, when all they want to be is your children.
80 Chicago Reader
The mystery has never been resolved, but to his credit Bar-Lev acknowledges that he himself has become part of the story, torn between sympathy and suspicion.
80 Empire
A highly engaging documentary that recounts a remarkable tale. Young Marla is clearly talented, but so too is her father…
75 Miami Herald
Documentary gold, and you will have formed an opinion on the controversy by the time you leave the theater. You may not know art, but you'll know what you like.
75 Baltimore Sun
Because Bar-Lev fails to go the extra mile either as a filmmaker or a friend, My Kid Could Paint That is at best "documentary silver."
75 San Francisco Chronicle Kenneth Baker
No one emerges unpunished.
75 The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The winner of this year's audience award for best documentary at Sundance has it all: heartless media, art fraud and a four-year-old painting prodigy.
75 Chicago Sun-Times
In the last analysis, I guess it all reduces to taste and instinct. Some paintings are good, says me, or says you, and some are bad. Some paintings could be painted by a child, some couldn't be.
75 New York Daily News
Everyone involved, from Marla's defensive parents to the cynical journalists who promoted and then turned on her, seems to have some sort of agenda.
70 Variety
The popular human-interest story of a child prodigy becomes an engrossing meditation on truth, media exploitation and the value of art in My Kid Could Paint That.
70 Village Voice Nathan Lee
What began as a human-interest story for filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev led down stranger paths than the Duchampian conundrums of modern art.
63 New York Post
Struggles to maintain a sober, evenhanded tone about an utterly ridiculous story.
60 The Hollywood Reporter
The film and the controversy should generate interest at the boxoffice, but it's more a story about media manipulation and parental responsibility than art.
50 The New York Times
Mr. Bar-Lev has made an excellent documentary, but it would have been better if he had not made it at all.
50 Los Angeles Times
The longer it goes, the more frustrating it becomes, as Bar Lev declines to come down on one side or the other.
40 Austin Chronicle
My conclusion is that exploitation of a child for the sake of one's career is a shameful act.

CLOSE THIS WINDOW

©2009 CNET Networks Inc. All rights reserved.