American Honey
A24 | Release Date: September 30, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
33
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Daily NewsAllen SalkinOct 6, 2020
The film slowly, slowly blossoms into an emotional wildflower by the end, leaving us with a scene that is kind of spontaneous road baptism, an unsure note of spiritual birth. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzOct 13, 2016
It’s bold, captivating cinema, with a soundtrack that threatens to never leave your head. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternSep 29, 2016
I don’t know how Ms. Arnold works the magic she does with her actors, whether amateur or professional — Mr. LaBeouf inhabits his role with sly charm and explosive ferocity — but it’s an expansion of what she started doing more than a decade ago in her remarkable “Wasp.” Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottSep 29, 2016
American Honey, long and messy as it is, is by turns observant and exuberant, and sweet in a way that is both unexpected and organic. Read full review
100
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerSep 28, 2016
In Andrea Arnold’s sublime film American Honey, freedom is relative, but every once in a while it can feel so damn good that the whole world disappears around it. Read full review
100
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 20, 2016
Part dreamy millennial picaresque, part distorted tapestry of Americana and part exquisitely illustrated iTunes musical, “Honey” daringly commits only to the loosest of narratives across its luxurious 162-minute running time. Yet it’s constantly, engrossingly active, spinning and sparking and exploding in cycles like a Fourth of July Catherine wheel. Read full review
100
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 20, 2016
It’s visually astonishing and often devastating, too. This might be the freshest film about young people in America since Larry Clark’s Kids. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 20, 2016
You could also argue that this almost intentionally exhausting film is too much of a good thing. But there’s amazingly little of it you'd want to live without. Read full review
91
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 18, 2016
Sure, Arnold's movie is aimless, at times frustrating, like its characters. It's also a harshly poetic reflection on what being young must mean today. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattSep 29, 2016
For the most part it succeeds, gorgeously — though it will probably make anyone over 30 feel either mildly outraged or wildly irrelevant. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerSep 28, 2016
American Honey doesn’t rise and fall on the strength of its love story, if that’s even what happens between Star and Jake. Arnold touches on a lot—rural poverty in America, class divisions, the impulsiveness and recklessness of youth—but never tames her film into a strict polemic. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 20, 2016
It's the closest thing to a magnum opus in Arnold's blossoming career. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 20, 2016
It is indulgent in its length and relative plotlessness, though there’s no point at which the bravado of Arnold’s filmmaking, Lane’s riveting performance or Ryan’s stunning Polaroid-shaped lensing ever flag. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 29, 2016
It’s been a while since a film so powerfully evoked the thrilling possibilities and wasted pleasures of the open road. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 29, 2016
If you think LaBeouf is a joke, you need to see him here. There’s wildness there, but acting centers him. He’s magnetizing. Read full review
90
ScreenCrushBritt HayesSep 27, 2016
Though it may come off as Malick for hip-hop-loving millennials, Arnold’s film is a surprisingly poignant experience, a sprawling yet intimate odyssey through Middle America, and a bracingly honest portrait of emerging adulthood. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 6, 2016
At times the symbolism grows repetitive, and the running time of 2 hours, 42 minutes admittedly tested my attention span on occasions — but this is an original, sometimes breathtaking depiction of a certain slice of American life. Read full review
88
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanOct 6, 2016
Arnold also brings to bear a euphoric appreciation for the spirit of freedom and the optimism — if not the innocence — of her subjects, who can seem at once world-weary and hopelessly naive. Call it a form of ecstatic naturalism, one that revels in the ugly paradoxes of life. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 30, 2016
Its beating heart is in a story of youth. Reckless, fearless, joyous, always-moving youth. Read full review
80
EmpireHelen O'HaraOct 17, 2016
It’s a little too long, but holds the attention thanks to Lane’s charisma, Ryan’s breathtaking cinematography and the dizzying power of young love. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 13, 2016
American Honey is a remarkable movie, which doesn’t mean it’s perfect — its imperfections, in fact, are what help make it so urgent, so vital, so real. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottOct 13, 2016
An easy-going gem that is at times funny, at times heartbreaking, at times scary -- but always, unfailingly engaging. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensOct 1, 2016
The performances, whether from novices like the sensational Lane or professionals like LaBeouf, Keough, and Patton, are at once naturalistic and emotionally precise. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 1, 2016
Over and over, American Honey calls attention to how observant it is, rather than just being observant. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 20, 2016
There is a great performance here from Sasha Lane and this is another step onwards and upwards for Andrea Arnold herself. Read full review
79
The VergeTasha RobinsonSep 14, 2016
One of Arnold's greatest accomplishments in American Honey is in illustrating, with a loose and comfortable storytelling style, how these misfits build a form of easy intimacy without really opening up to each other, or getting attached. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonOct 13, 2016
In an Arnold film, plot is pretty much beside the point. Instead, she focuses on the subtleties of character — and her insights can be both enlightening and terrifying. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 6, 2016
Ironically, the film itself is as gentle and unexploitative as they come. Yes, it deserves the rating, and yes, it depicts teenagers doing things the grown-ups would rather not admit they actually do, but it does so with a poetic curiosity and a sense of what it’s like to be young, poor, and rootless — both future-less and free. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 30, 2016
Arnold has made a bleak romance that shimmers with hope, an overlong odyssey that we smell just as surely as we feel. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartSep 29, 2016
At 162 minutes, American Honey may test some viewers’ patience, but for this one, it paid off with an unflinching portrait of middle America, a love letter to the open road and a dynamic newcomer in Sasha Lane. Read full review
71
TheWrapBen CrollMay 22, 2016
There’s a great movie buried somewhere in American Honey — heck, there might be two of them. But at its current length, it resembles nothing so much as fine spirit overly diluted with water. The care and quality is all there, but in this iteration they ain’t coming through. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 20, 2016
The film works best as a poignant character study, observing Star as she settles into her independence and figures out who she wants to be, framed by a vast physical landscape that stretches socioeconomically from privileged wealth to squalid poverty. There's a wonderful intimacy in the way Arnold examines young women in her films. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenOct 5, 2016
There’s no grand plot outline in American Honey, and at two-and-a-half-hours' running time, the film certainly rambles. Read full review
60
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyMay 20, 2016
While American Honey exudes ample energy, this episodic piece doesn’t muster much narrative drive over its daunting running time of two and three quarter hours. There’s probably a stronger, tighter film in here, but fair game at least to Arnold in her commitment to following the winding back roads of filmic experiment rather than the well-mapped highway of storytelling. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 20, 2016
It's a bold film, full of energy and spunk, but a patchy, half-formed, rambling one too. Read full review
50
Little White LiesSophie Monks KaufmanDec 1, 2021
Andrea Arnold is an exciting director who knows how to create a thick patina of realism within which female protagonists stoically pursue improvement. It’s a little crushing, therefore, that American Honey feels unmoored from anything approaching real life. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesDusty SomersOct 6, 2016
Pushing three hours, American Honey feels every bit its length, often luxuriating in extended scenes inside the van, pot smoke swirling and hip-hop thumping. Like most of the film, these scenes are vividly rendered but increasingly repetitive and aimless. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneOct 3, 2016
Arnold’s very strength — the mashup of grime and epiphany — is in danger of becoming a shtick. Then, there’s the length: an elasticated plot doesn’t really suit a director who is at her best in specific locations, where people get stuck like flies. Read full review
50
Village VoiceDanny KingSep 28, 2016
The majority of American Honey has Arnold working overtime to make her movie seem important or scandalous. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneSep 26, 2016
This is a patchwork dystopia of white poverty whose facets are both difficult to deny and to prove exist precisely as depicted. Read full review
40
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 20, 2016
American Honey ticks off all of the indie clichés. Fireworks? Check. Standing up in convertible with your arms outstretched? Check. Grubby children? Check. But all of this could be forgiven, or at least put up with, if the film wasn't so long and meandering. Read full review
30
We Got This CoveredJosh CabritaSep 28, 2016
The characters are despicable and insufferable, but worse yet, interchangeable and not particularly interesting. Read full review
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