Towelhead

Film Threat Zack Haddad

Racism, teen sex, and war are all hot button issues. When you are a young person these things can seem new and confusing. In Alan Ball’s genius Towelhead, all of those above mentioned subjects go hand-in-hand in a truly wonderful cinematic experience.

Premiere Priya Jain

To call Towelhead exploitative is to miss the point. What made Towelhead the novel so extraordinary was the honesty in Jasira's adolescent narrative voice, the genuine way she misguidedly, but honestly, conflates the sexual attention she receives with the parental affection she really needs. With the film, Ball, though he drops the book's first person narration, is faithful to that voice.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Alternately disturbing, laceratingly satirical and affectingly poignant, the film, which he adapted from the novel, Towelhead, by Alicia Erian, is very much a companion piece to the Ball-penned "American Beauty" in its unwavering examination of the dirty little secrets and raging hypocrisies lurking just beyond all those manicured suburban lawns.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The movie belongs to the fifth-billed Bishil, a truly gutsy young actress who captures the essence of young female desire in all its adolescent confusion.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The result is a movie about the many forms of social and sexual abuse that does not make the abusee a victim but victor.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The movie puts Jasira -- and the audience -- through the wringer, but it also makes the ride worth it.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The story builds to a feverish pitch and then never reaches a satisfactory conclusion. But while it’s onscreen, the film moves, incites, and jabs, all while reminding us how difficult it is to grow up female and sane in this world.

Chicago Tribune Tasha Robinson

Everything about the film is aggressively provocative, in both senses of the word.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A blackly funny provocation.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Ball may not have the answers but he eloquently and forcefully explores some of the potential ramifications. The ending may be too pat, but the journey to get there - bitter, spicy, and poignant - more than compensates for any last-minute fumbles.

Washington Post Neely Tucker

It's clever and original with an excellent cast. Ball's script catches a lot of the novel's pop, often word for word. I laughed a lot.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Beautifully acted and accomplishes exactly what writer/director Alan Ball set out to accomplish.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

As it becomes clear that Ball, in essence, has just restaged American Beauty with a socially conscious paint job, the sensationalism of Towelhead looks more and more like a dramatic tic.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The heart of the movie is really in Jasira's moments with her father, a mass of contradictions that Macdissi plays with comic ferocity and genuine feeling.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

This third-act redemption raises Towelhead several notches, but it still ends up feeling like a well-acted and well-intentioned after-school special, a long way from the vividness and texture of Ball's television work.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The film is superbly acted (especially by Macdissi, who makes the father a borderline hysteric), but it's hard to know what to feel except, "How can any girl navigate this oversexualized culture?"

The New York Times Stephen Holden

A crude but scathing portrait of suburban life.

NPR Bob Mondello

The performances are nicely calibrated, even when the director isn't meshing them into a persuasive whole. Summer Bishil makes Jasira an appealing naif -- smart, precocious and curious, if too easily led by hormones.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

From its title on down, Towelhead alarms and manipulates, and succeeds in goading the audience like a schoolyard bully, but apart from Bishil's harrowing attempts to find herself, the strings stay too visible.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Towelhead is transgressive without being effectively subversive, gutsy to no particular end. It simply lacks style, which counts for so much in this sort of thing.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The potency of the acting is also undercut by leaden pacing and a sense of claustrophobia.

Los Angeles Times Gary Goldstein

On the upside, newcomer Summer Bishil turns in a gutsy, quietly riveting performance as Jasira.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

What he (Ball) intends as knife-edge realism instead comes across as another con job.

Slate Dana Stevens

The 19-year-old actress Summer Bishil captures the terrifying combination of lubricity and innocence that is being 13. Her performance is the truest thing in a movie that, for all its good intentions, feels thoroughly phony and mildly embarrassing.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Ball's snide humor and cynical arrogance undercut his message at every turn.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

As a director Ball amplifies the flaws in his own writing; his supporting characters are too broadly pitched to take seriously, and he tends to smack you in the face with the point of every scene.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

As a first-time feature director, though, he (Ball) seldom lets the material speak for itself. Every shot is a statement, every scene sells an attitude.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Ball's trying to be honest about adolescent coming of age, but since he's dishonest about everything else, the movie collapses in on itself.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

So disturbing it makes you uncomfortable watching it.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Ball knows one trick, and it's sure over.

Village Voice Nick Pinkerton

Ball, who can't conceive of human motives beyond the hypertrophic, smutty sexuality that's his stock in trade, primly divides his characters into avatars of Sick Repression or Healthy Liberation.