| 80 |
The New York Times
It is surprisingly timely.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
A little Hitchcock and some good Psycho fun at the beach.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
If it doesn't always come off, enough headlong energy develops to carry it through.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Its cheeky, good fun is what makes Psycho Beach Party an enjoyable, if weightless, romp.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
Smart, fun and mildly subversive, but it rides the wave of its joke a little too long.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Examiner
Overstays its welcome until the jokes curdle and the satire becomes a blunt instrument, but not before Busch throws some priceless one-liners.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
For all its energy and inspired moments of giddy goofiness, Psycho Beach Party gets stuck in the sand.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
Marc Caro
There's nothing here that's outrageous, startling or daring enough to give your funny bone a jolt.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
While there is archival value in permanently recording this work on celluloid, the best way to really enjoy it remains live on stage.
|
| 42 |
Portland Oregonian
Never maintains the spark necessary to sustain a feature film.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
This unsubtle parody probably worked better on stage; its candy-colored artifice looks more than a little strained on film, and the actors are all trying really hard to be camp.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
Ultimately, Psycho...can't overcome the redundancy of parodying a genre that long ago sank into its own satiric muck.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
The problem is, director Robert Lee King has a hard time sustaining the aimed-for camp tone, and while there are a few well-spaced giggles to be had, the movie sputters more than it soars for most of its 95 minutes.
|
| 30 |
Los Angeles Times
Psycho Beach Party is, from the start, in dire need of the electroshock therapy that Florence ultimately undergoes.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
The viewer is left to ponder the number of levels on which this counts as a pointless exercise -- a parody of parodic movies, a deconstruction of transparent genres, a self-negatingly knowing example of camp.
|
| 25 |
New York Post
Charles Busch's spoof of beach-party movies and psychological thrillers, an off-Broadway hit 13 years ago, stubbornly refuses to entertain in this unrelentingly dull film version.
|
| 20 |
Chicago Reader
This multigenre parody is excruciatingly slow and unamusing; a go-go dancer in the opening and closing credits does as much in a few minutes to shake up our perspective on a bygone aesthetic as the entire narrative in between.
|
| 13 |
Mr. Showbiz
Struggles like a fat kid on the gym rope to conjure up even a single decent laugh.
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