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Bartleby
Outrider Pictures
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some sexual content
Starring
David Paymer,
Crispin Glover,
Glenne Headly,
Joe Piscopo,
Maury Chaykin,
Seymour Cassel,
Carrie Snodgress,
and
Dick Martin
A modern adaptation of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener."
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jonathan Parker
Catherine DiNapoli
Herman Melville (story Bartleby the Scrivener)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Jonathan Parker
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: July 8, 2003
Video: July 8, 2003
Theatrical: May 24, 2002
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
82 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
90
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Mr. Parker has brilliantly updated his source and grasped its essence, composing a sorrowful and hilarious tone poem about alienated labor, or an absurdist workplace sitcom, as if a team of French surrealists had been put in charge of "The Drew Carey Show."
90
LA Weekly
Chuck Wilson
While Parker and co-writer Catherine di Napoli are faithful to Melville’s plotline, they and a fully engaged supporting cast — have made the old boy's characters more quick-witted than any English Lit major would have thought possible.
80
Slate
David Edelstein
The neat thing about Jonathan Parker's modern-day Bartleby (Outsider Pictures) is that it brings out all the vaudeville undercurrents in Melville's dark tale and turns it into a surreal tragi-sitcom for our own era.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
This is a shrewd and effective film from a director who understands how to create and sustain a mood.
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The film has been directed by Jonathan Parker; he adapted the Melville story with Catherine DiNapoli. It's his first work, and a promising one. I admire it and yet cannot recommend it, because it overstays its natural running time.
63
Miami Herald
Charles Savage
Though this film can be clumsy, its ambitions are equally -- and admirably -- uncommercial.
60
Variety
Joe Leydon
Although closer in tone to "Office Space" than Herman Melville, Jonathan Parker's absurdist update of Bartleby is surprisingly faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of the "Moby-Dick" author's 1853 novella about an under-achieving Wall Street copy clerk.
50
TV Guide
Ken Fox
It's a testament to both the timelessness and the prescience of Herman Melville's 1853 story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" that it can be so easily updated with so few changes.
50
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
It's a parable as timely today as when it was written. But except for Paymer as the boss who ultimately expresses empathy for Bartleby's pain, the performances are so stylized as to be drained of human emotion.
40
New Times (L.A.)
Luke Y. Thompson
A key problem here is that the film is adapting a short story, and, as such, has to pad it out to feature length -- it still comes in at a scant 82 minutes, about 52 minutes too long.
40
Empire
Nick Dawson
A fable that leaves us unenlightened at the end, it is a curious, worthy failure.
40
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
It's not a bad idea, and it has the right cast and the right look. But, sad to say, it lacks the pace and energy to make it come alive and therefore remains more of a literary conceit than a movie.
40
Film Threat
Ron Wells
Oh, boy. This is not unlike watching one of the movies Jerry Lewis made after that concentration camp/clown epic nearly destroyed his career and his mind.
40
Austin Chronicle
Marrit Ingman
Comes across as stiff and uneven.
38
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Does little more than re-create the oppressive feeling of suffocating employment. And why put yourself through that experience without the promise of a paycheck at the other end?
30
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
Parker's film is flat beyond the flatness appropriate to the story; the conflict between Glover and Paymer follows Melville's original so squarely that it quickly begins to feel like they're going through the motions.
25
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
It's no insult to Melville to say that he wrote, in effect, the original ''Dilbert.'' This movie, unfortunately, makes ''Dilbert'' look like Melville.
25
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
There's obviously some philosophical comment on the alienating effects of ho-hum toil buried somewhere in this weird mess, which features an irritating, theremin-heavy score. But can you be bothered stifling a yawn and searching for meaning? I would prefer not to.
20
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
The loud, musty production design -- steeped in lime greens and tangerine oranges -- smells of recirculated air and enervated ambition, but unfortunately, so does the movie itself.
 The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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