Die Mommie Die

Village Voice Alexis Soloski

Though Natasha Lyonne as bratty daughter and Philip Baker Hall as the disposable spouse impress, it's Busch's heartfelt Joan Crawford homage that enthralls. Busch can transcend even the smog, making hazy camp seem fresh.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

With his hilarious spoof Die Mommie Die! Charles Busch takes the melodramatic woman's picture of the '40s and '50s to delirious extremes.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Makes a jolly absurdist stew out of its sources.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Busch combines French absurdist theater and American performance art with a drag queen's flamboyant wit.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Hotly hilarious.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Hilarious mixture of Greek tragedy and Aaron Spelling soap opera that spews nasty one-liners and winking '60 signifiers like a slot machine that's paying out.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

It succeeds, with a big, false-eyelashed wink.

Variety Dennis Harvey

Doing for the cheesier Ross Hunter-style bigscreen soaps of the early/mid-'60s what "Far From Heaven" did for the plush Douglas Sirk melodramas of a decade earlier -- albeit with tongue planted much further in cheek -- writer/star Charles Busch's Die Mommie Die! is an enjoyable genre homage-cum-parody.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Busch, looking like a depressed Stockard Channing, throws his tantrums with breathy ''aristocratic'' hauteur. Yet the movie winds up walking a line between put-on pastiche and kitsch passion, and Jason Priestley is perfect as a brooding lunkhead of Tab Hunter gigolo-osity.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

A brilliantly pitch-perfect sendup of a particular type of cheesy movie.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Occasionally stagy and flat, "Die" is worth seeing for Busch's grand performance, which won him a Special Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Taken together, the sum of so many parts is too schizophrenic to be wholeheartedly embraced -- the movie is played for parody, but with a veneer of respectability that leaves the whole endeavor betwixt and between.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

But fabulous though the allusions, sets and costumes are, Busch's performance is the movie's heart, and like the screen idols whose every gesture he's lovingly absorbed, Busch can pack a world of meaning into an arched eyebrow and a slight crack of the voice.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The problem with Die, Mommie, Die, a drag send-up of the genre, is that it spoils the fun by making it obvious.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Neither hilarious nor a credible spoof.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This originated as a late-night play, and the humor is correspondingly sophomoric, but I loved Dennis McCarthy's melodramatic score.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

A one-note farce that struggles just to remain on key.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Busch, responsible for the similarly hit-and-miss-that's-a-mister "Psycho Beach Party," has a good idea; two in one movie would make him absolutely fabulous.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Predictably, the jokes are raunchy, yet they're few in number, as if the writer's sleaze well is running dry. First-time director Mark Rucker has a nice feel for period detailing but fails to build on his star's rare flashes of high energy.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

It's a screen adaptation of Busch's stage play of the same name, which never really went anywhere after its 1999 Los Angeles debut -- and doesn't go anywhere here.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

What's strangest, though, about Die Mommie Die! is how material that was obviously so giddily irreverent in origin became so inert, so joyless and dull.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Seems more like an amateur revue, perfectly all right for what it is, but not meant to be seen beyond an audience of friends and family.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Mean-spirited and stagy where "Psycho Beach Party" was cinematic and charming, Die, Mommie, Die recycles gags from Busch's screenwriting debut--from transparently phony rear projection to a character's crippling constipation--and the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty hard.