No Picnic

Name: No Picnic
Genre: Drama
Released: July 12, 1990
Duration: 88 min
Rating: 72

1990

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Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Critic Reviews

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Movie Details & Credits

Release Date: July 12, 1990

Summary: A black-and-white love letter to pre-gentrification New York City, Phil Hartman's No Picnic captures a remote time and place - the East Village circa 1985, a vibrant, seedy neighborhood populated by musicians, pimps and poets. Macabee Cohen (David Brisbin), whose heyday as a rock musician is long gone, travels the city in a beat-up VW bus,A black-and-white love letter to pre-gentrification New York City, Phil Hartman's No Picnic captures a remote time and place - the East Village circa 1985, a vibrant, seedy neighborhood populated by musicians, pimps and poets. Macabee Cohen (David Brisbin), whose heyday as a rock musician is long gone, travels the city in a beat-up VW bus, supplying records to local juke boxes. His beloved Lower East Side neighborhood is in turmoil: rampant real estate speculation, tenants on rent strike, art invading the bars - "in my own neighborhood, I felt like I was in the middle of a party that I hadn't been invited to," he says. Mac's personal life is in turmoil, too: his girlfriend dumped him for the Air Force, his neighbor is pressuring him into a green card marriage, his father has left his mother for a younger man, and his brother is sending post cards from his sexual sojourn to all fifty states. Then a mysterious girl appears in his life, and Mac's obsession to find her becomes a quest of self-discovery, too - "I was looking for someone to save," he says, "to save myself."… Expand

Genre(s): Drama

Runtime: 88 min

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Critic Reviews

David Sterritt

Phil Hartman wrote and directed the picture, which proves for the zillionth time that a low budget doesn't have to mean low quality. Read full review

David Fear

A wise man once said that every film is a documentary of its own making, and Philip Hartman’s No Picnic doubles as a chronicle not just of a lost paradise but a forgotten era — of downtown NYC, of genuinely independent moviemaking, of an alternate version of the “greed is good” go-go Eighties. Read full review

Phil Hall

Finally receiving a theatrical release 20 years after it was made, Philip Hartman’s “No Picnic” emerges as an entertaining if flawed relic from a very different era. Read full review

Caryn James

It is impossible to separate Mr. Hartman's writing and direction from Mr. Horton's smooth, sophisticated camera work, which offers a broad view of the cluttered streets and also peers up narrow stairwells to suggest Mac's claustrophobic life. However their collaboration worked, ''No Picnic'' does not look or sound quite like any other film, and that's more than you can say about most movies of any size. Read full review

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