The Brown Bunny
Wellspring Media | Release Date: August 27, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
6
Negative:
9

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
An honorable and often enticing piece of personal filmmaking. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Gets its teeth in you and shakes. Once it’s over, you find yourself replaying it on an endless loop in your head. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
It's hard to deny that Gallo has caught the freedom and melancholy, the intoxicating aimlessness, the lonely twilight beauty of a solo road trip in a way that no previous filmmaker quite has. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Make no mistake: The Cannes version was a bad film, but now Gallo's editing has set free the good film inside. The Brown Bunny is still not a complete success -- it is odd and off-putting when it doesn't want to be -- but as a study of loneliness and need, it evokes a tender sadness. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The Brown Bunny is certainly about how vain Gallo is. Yet rarely has narcissism produced such a handsome work of cinema. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleNeva Chonin
An idiosyncratic document of sexual obsession and guilt, it alienates as easily as it mesmerizes. Read full review
70
VarietyDerek Elley
An astonishing improvement on the original version. With 27 minutes excised, pic emerges from its mind-numbing undergrowth as a memorable -- if still highly specialized -- exercise in personal, '70s-style American filmmaking, with a cohesive feel and rhythm that marks Gallo as a distinctive indie talent. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
It's genuinely elemental, embarrassingly sincere. You can't accuse Gallo of pandering to anyone but himself. Not just a one-man band, he is his own entourage -- and likely to remain so. And that anguished solipsism seems to be, at least in part, the movie's subject. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
If the independent film world were littered with alleged disasters like The Brown Bunny, the scene would be far richer for it. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid Denby
In brief, The Brown Bunny, however antagonistic and borderline tedious, is an art work of sorts, and Gallo himself, though an egomaniac of staggering solemnity-a priest of art longing for a cult-is not a fake. Read full review
70
SalonCharles Taylor
In "Buffalo 66," Gallo was an unfunny prankster. In The Brown Bunny, wearing his heart on his sleeve, he's a real filmmaker. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
Yes, the film jumps up and down on a high wire over the chasm separating Pretension and Art. But that's also a form of courage. Read full review
63
New York PostV.A. Musetto
As evident from The Brown Bunny and his directing debut, "Buffalo 66," Gallo is talented, although in an unconventional way. Call him an angry young man with a future. Read full review
63
PremiereAaron Hillis
The film stubbornly refuses to fill empty space with dialogue or adhere to any structure other than its own downbeat atmosphere, forcing viewers to be intensely patient or squirm. It's the best film I’ve seen in a while that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Quite possibly the biggest ego trip ever to play Cannes, or anywhere else, at any time. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Neither an atrocity nor a revelation, The Brown Bunny is a very watchable, often beautiful-looking attempt by Mr. Gallo to reproduce the kind of loosely structured mood pieces that found American and select foreign-language cinemas of the 1960's and 70's often at their most adventurous. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
It's actually quite interesting, albeit in a supremely self-conscious and artsy-fartsy way. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Gallo's earlier work suggests he has directorial talent, but here it's buried beneath too much ego to be detectible. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
How much you enjoy the experience will depend on your take on Gallo. If you think he's a brilliant, satirical cut-up, then The Brown Bunny is an elaborate and successful art prank. If you think he's a pretentious, self-obsessed, tedious weirdo, then The Brown Bunny will back you up 100% Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
Despite its formalistic failings and truly absurd Porn Moment, there's a morbidity here that feels quite genuine, and, after the movie is over, it amounts to rough-hewn poetry. Read full review
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
This bizarre little diversion will soon scamper into the wild grass, never to be seen again. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The Brown Bunny is one long, self-indulgent bore topped off with a hard-core porn scene featuring Gallo and co-star Chloë Sevigny. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJim Fusilli
An excruciatingly embarrassing display of ego and ineptitude.
30
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It's not really a movie. I suppose it's what could be called a recorded behavior. Read full review
30
SlateDavid Edelstein
Inexpressiveness is what separates the film from its models (chiefly Antonioni) and what makes it so exasperating. Read full review
25
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
It is not the worst movie ever made, as some critics claim, but it does a passing imitation. Read full review
25
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
The kind of fascinatingly bad film only a really gifted and fearless moviemaker could make: a 92-minute long raggedy-raunchy vision of sex, transit and alienation in which Gallo focuses on himself so obsessively, it's as if he'd become his own stalker. Read full review
20
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Only in the last third, when he gets down to the business of telling a story, does The Brown Bunny become a porn movie -- though not in the sense you'd expect. Read full review
10
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
In his second feature as a director, Gallo acts as writer, director, producer, star, cinematographer, production designer and editor. Thus, the failure is all his. Read full review
0
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
There are not enough synonyms for ''bad'' to describe the pretension and utter banality of the masturbatory The Brown Bunny, a film so exhaustively awful even its creator Vincent Gallo once disavowed it. Read full review
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