Mutual Appreciation

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Andrew Bujalski's considerable gifts begin with his deep appreciation of the miserable, hilarious awkwardness of real life.

TV Guide Ken Fox

A marvelous, deceptively simple accomplishment shot on grainy 16mm film and featuring a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors delivering loosely written dialogue.

San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson

Bujalski's writing is so good, and every shot and edit seems exactly right. Hopefully, there will always be a place for a film like this on a theater screen, no matter the whims of the marketplace.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Bujalski's gift for capturing the awkwardness of social relationships and the messy, unkempt details of everyday life is revealing.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

The halting dialogue, full of awkward pauses and restarts, seems improvised in the way that only carefully scripted material can.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Bujalski's brand of stylized dialogue sounds genuinely fly-on-the-wall.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

It's the sort of unassuming discovery that could get lost in a crowd or suffer from too much big love, and while it won't save or change your life, it may make your heart swell. Its aim is modest and true.

Variety Joe Leydon

If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer, the result might have looked and sounded like Mutual Appreciation.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

There's a rawness and immediacy to his (Bujalski's) work that cuts straight to the experience, a starkness that's startling in an age of bloated spectacle.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

If this is the sound of a new generation, then it may be the first generation cautious enough to embrace friendship as mightier than love.

Film Threat Eric Campos

Authentic and hilarious. This film sparks with a natural comic rhythm.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Gently persistent in its ironies, "Funny Ha Ha" managed to be both charmingly lackadaisical and annoyingly smug; Mutual Appreciation, which Bujalski shot in grainy black-and-white in hipster Brooklyn (and is self-distributing), is even more so.

Chicago Reader Jim Healy

One of Bujalski's gifts is his ability to give every part, no matter how big or small, a sense of intelligence and life that extends beyond the frame and running time, and in this his work recalls the best of both Mike Leigh and Richard Linklater.

The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck

Particularly adept at chronicling the vague existential aimlessness of a segment of postcollege young adults, Bujalski manages to make his subjects seem simultaneously articulate and socially dunderheaded.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The three leads deliver funny, convincing performances in a film that wears both youthful callowness and intellectual sophistication lightly. Mutual Appreciation is the kind of movie whose dialogue mostly hews to the rhythms of "like, you know, whatever" but then occasionally throws in a word such as "puissance." And, like, it totally works.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

As before, Bujalski's preference for nonprofessional actors, his ear for the rhythms of conversation among bright young 20-somethings and his adept use of a roving, hand-held camera (this time shooting in fuzzy black and white) lend the film an invigorating energy.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

This indie rambler was my favorite movie of South by Southwest 05, where it premiered. But before I go any further, let's establish that Mutual Appreciation is not for you if you go to the movies to see things blown up or if you expect such conventional niceties as a three-act structure or lighting effects not achieved by yanking up a window shade.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson

What's so fresh about Mutual Appreciation is how acutely it represents the social rituals of today's post-collegiate types.

New York Post Kyle Smith

The indie Mutual Appreciation isn't much more interesting than hanging out with four smart, nice, semi-confused people in their 20s. But that puts it far above the average movie.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

That's a knock on ­Bujalski -- that his characters exist in a vacuum, with few references to popular culture or politics or much of anything, really. Of course, one artist's vacuum is another's poetic distillation, and there's something about Mutual Appreciation (which is shot in an unassuming black and white) that spoke more directly to my inner slacker than any film since, well, "Funny Ha Ha."

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The film's mood and style are pitched somewhere between '60s American indie and French New Wave and, as you watch these people, they seem painfully, amusingly on-target. They may irritate you a little, but that's the right response.