Bombay Beach
Focus World | Release Date: October 14, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
74
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 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
90
SalonAndrew O'HehirFeb 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
90
The New York TimesStephen HoldenFeb 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
80
EmpirePhilip WildingFeb 13, 2012
The fact that Alma Har'el is still stuck in music video director mode makes for an interesting new breed of documentary. Read full review
80
Village VoiceEric HynesFeb 13, 2012
That it documents rural poverty in the American West without exploiting or sanctifying its subjects would be cause enough for praise. But this doesn't begin to approach what Alma Har'el pulls off with her hybrid documentary knockout Bombay Beach. Read full review
60
MovielineAlison WillmoreFeb 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
60
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenFeb 13, 2012
More lyrical tone poem than straightforward documentary. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayFeb 13, 2012
This aestheticizing of troubled lives proves problematic over the long haul. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerFeb 13, 2012
Rather than bringing out the symbolic inner lives of the characters, these sequences seem like the intrusion of an aggressive authorial personality on a film whose subject-as well as the fact of Har'el's outsider status-demands that the filmmaker simply sit back and observe. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 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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