Party Monster 2003

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: There is nothing remotely affecting about Party Monster. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: [I] found the camera work to be very murky, the direction to be confused, the music go in the way of it instead of actually augmenting it. Read more

Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune: In the end you don't believe what you're watching, and you don't care. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: [A] muddled, sometimes touching movie. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: We begin the film not knowing what brought Michael and James together. We end, after a too-long 98 minutes, precisely the same way. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: It takes some doing to make a potentially epic cultural moment seem smaller than life, but Bailey and Barbato have pulled it off. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: A bold and engrossing drama. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: A mess. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: In the end, for all the vibrancy, there's not much there there. Maybe that's the point, but I doubt it. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: You haven't seen this many outrageous costumes since the Halloween parade on Cedar Springs. Read more

Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly: Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (who also directed the marginally better 1998 documentary of the same name, on the same subject) are too enamored of the tawdry tale to actually say anything with or about it. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: [Culkin and Green's] assortment of vocal tics, nervous laughs and over-the-top 'nancy-ness' often are very funny and appropriately giddy. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Both pointless and grotesque, it accomplishes nothing but the impossible: It makes the charismatic look merely tiresome, and dangerous decadence look deadly dull. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: [Culkin's] performance in Party Monster is so embarrassing one doesn't know where to look. (Well, perhaps at the exit.) Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Alig is played by Macaulay Culkin, in his first movie since Richie Rich (1994), and it is a fearless performance as a person so shallow, narcissistic and amoral that eventually even his friends simply stare at him in disbelief. Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: If I hadn't had a professional obligation to stay until the end, I'd have disappeared faster than the coke that's snorted up Alig's nose. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: The actions of the glammy main characters become boorish and tedious long before the party's over. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Gracelessly executed, it throws out mock documentary, fantasy sequences and rapid montages, but still drags on woefully, and looks like it was soaked in dirty water. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: There are many ways of depicting an innocent's descent into hell, but the camp approach is surely the least advisable. Read more

Derek Adams, Time Out: Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: A colorful, lurid and ultimately so-what look at some rather obnoxious personalities careening down their little road to ruin. Read more

Laura Sinagra, Village Voice: The film is ultimately more a C.A.K.E. partyer's failed fetish object than a keg partyer's new Sid and Nancy. Read more