Kids

Miramax | Release Date: September 1, 1995

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

63	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Peter Travers

Cautionary tales aren't new. What sets Kids apart as daringly original, touching and alive is its authenticity. Read full review

100

Edward Guthmann

None of the advance hype on Kids can prepare you for the raw, stripped-down reality that Larry Clark captures in his astonishing first film. Nothing can prepare you, because no other film has ever caught the recklessness, sweat and tingly heat of teenage sexuality so effectively. Read full review

Todd McCarthy

Disturbing because it is so believable, Kids goes well beyond any previous American film in frankly describing the lives of at least a certain group of modern teenagers. Read full review

Marc Savlov

Disturbing, harrowing, visceral, and even sporadically humorous, Kids is one of those rare films that begs the description “a must-see.” For once, it's the truth. Read full review

Roger Ebert

Since Fitzpatrick is an actor (and "no ladies' man," he told Clark), this is a performance and, as such, one of the most effective I've seen. It's amazing how, watching the film, you dislike Telly so much you want to deny Fitzpatrick's accomplishment in creating him. Read full review

Janet Maslin

Mr. Clark's vision of these characters is so bleak and legitimately shocking that it makes almost any other portrait of American adolescence look like the picture of Dorian Gray...Kids is far too serious to be tarred as exploitation, and its extremism is both artful and devastatingly effective. Think of this not as cinema verite but as a new strain of post-apocalyptic science fiction, using hyperbole to magnify a kernel of terrible, undeniable truth. Read full review

Jay Boyar

Yet Kids does stay with you - which is more than can be said for a picture like Showgirls, most of which vanished from my consciousness 10 minutes after it ended. Nearly a month has elapsed since I've seen Kids and, tedious though much of it is, the experience lingers. [29 Sept 1995, p.19]

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Potentially the most controversial movie of 1995 and arguably a masterpiece, this edgy, downbeat film falls somewhere between social document and peep-show. Read full review

EmpireClark Collis

Without a doubt, hard hitting and thoguhtful, but Clarke's style here (as it would continue to do) hints at something altogether more disturbing. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

If Kids is simultaneously engrossing and detached, observant and just plain showy, that may be because the film is so caught up in trying to be a statement that it never develops its characters beyond their rowdy, bellicose facades. Read full review

Steve Persall

Kids isn't a cure, it's a symptom of mercenary moviemaking. Some will call it heroic, but that's just a smug synonym for exploitation. [25 Aug 1995, p.9]

Barbara Shulgasser

They have created a strange document about the unmaking of young lives, but it is a movie made without comment. Clark has stepped back into objectivity so far that he has neglected his role as interpreter for us. Read full review

Kenneth Turan

Kids is more tedious than titillating, one of those cinematic irritations more interesting to read about than to see. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

The tone is relentlessly sordid, the view of these pubescent hedonists so hermetic, that the film-makers' 'honesty' seems exploitative and sensational. The film may not say anything new, but the way it says it does, in the end, make it some sort of landmark. Depressing. Read full review

David Ansen

Unlike Clark's extraordinary books of black-and-white photography, Kids is stunningly anti-erotic, though not untainted by sensationalism. By condensing all this inflammatory material into a 24-hour time frame, Clark and 19-year-old screen-writer Harmony Korine create an overwrought narrative that's sometimes tedious in its relentlesshess. Read full review

Desson Thomson

Ostensibly about the banality of youthful evil, Kids is simply about its own banality. At best, it's a misplaced aesthetic experiment. At worst, it's glossy exploitation—with enough controversy to launch a thousand trite radio and television talk shows. Read full review

Lawrence Toppman

Larry Clark's documentary-like direction and Harmony Korine's undeviatingly dull screenplay make it possible to believe these useless lumps of flesh exist. [1 Sept 1995, p.3F]

Rita Kempley

Except for pedophiles, it's hard to imagine who'll be drawn to this irresponsible Little Bo Peep show. Read full review