Bombay Beach

Name: Bombay Beach
Genre: Drama, Musical, Documentary
Released: October 14, 2011
Duration: 80 min
Rating: 74

2011

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Generally favorable reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews

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Generally favorable reviews based on 6 Ratings

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7.8	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 6 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Focus World | Release Date: October 14, 2011

Summary: Bombay Beach is one of the poorest communities in southern California located on the shores of the Salton Sea, a man-made sea stranded in the middle of the Colorado desert that was once a beautiful vacation destination for the privileged and is now a pool of dead fish. Film director Alma Har'el tells the story of three protagonists.Bombay Beach is one of the poorest communities in southern California located on the shores of the Salton Sea, a man-made sea stranded in the middle of the Colorado desert that was once a beautiful vacation destination for the privileged and is now a pool of dead fish. Film director Alma Har'el tells the story of three protagonists. The trials of Benny Parrish, a young boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder whose troubled soul and vivid imagination create both suffering and joy for him and his complex and loving family. The story of CeeJay Thompson, a black teenager and aspiring football player who has taken refuge in Bombay Beach hoping to avoid the same fate of his cousin who was murdered by a gang of youths in Los Angeles; and that of Red, an ancient survivor, once an oil field worker, living on the fumes of whiskey, cigarettes and an irrepressible love of life. Together these portraits form a triptych of manhood in its various ages and guises, in a gently hypnotic style that questions whether they are a product of their world or if their world is a construct of their own imaginations.… Expand

Director: Alma Har'el

Genre(s): Drama, Musical, Documentary

Runtime: 80 min

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Critic Reviews

100

IndieWire Eric Kohn

Feb 13, 2012

The beautiful desolation of Bombay Beach makes it difficult to describe as a documentary. Alma Har'el's directorial debut takes a nonfiction setting and displays its haunting qualities in poetic terms. Read full review

Stephen Holden

Feb 13, 2012

Looks and feels like a fever dream about an alternate universe. Suffused with a sense of wonder, it hovers, dancing inside its own ethereal bubble. Read full review

Andrew O'Hehir

Feb 13, 2012

You either like this kind of ambitious, brave, borderless experiment or you don't, and I think it's absolutely magical and tragic. Read full review

Mark Olsen

Feb 13, 2012

More lyrical tone poem than straightforward documentary. Read full review

Movieline Alison Willmore

Feb 13, 2012

But it's to little Benny that the film's heart belongs -- an adorable kid who seems to live only half in this world and the rest of the time in his own imagination, Benny's on a regimen of Ritalin and Lithium and other meds that sometimes leave him even dreamier than is his norm. Read full review

Noel Murray

Feb 13, 2012

This aestheticizing of troubled lives proves problematic over the long haul. Read full review

Peter Debruge

Feb 13, 2012

In an inspired twist, Har'el brings surreal levity to the potentially downer subject by interrupting her elegiac regional portraiture with a series of amateur dance numbers. Still, without dramatic momentum, this fringe-appeal snapshot feels less like a film than a coffee-table photo project come to life. Read full review

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