The Wanderers

Adams Filmi | Release Date: July 4, 1979

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

64	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 13 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

David Denby

Apart from Wahl, the acting in the Wanderers is either embarrassingly flat or hysterically emotional, and the movie is an exhausting mishmash of styles. [23 July 1979, p.62]

Janet Maslin

Makes mincemeat of an excellent novel. Read full review

Michael Sragow

What revs up the movie and keeps it humming is the driving energy of early rock, with its innocent/rebellious spirit, and its theme that teens must find their own ways to love and fight. Read full review

Peter Stack

The Wanderer can turn an anxious tone to creepy and phantasmagoric. Kaufman's brilliant camera work relies on the exaggerated style of comic books, and the visual energy throughout is gritty. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

This is a giddy parody of gang pictures, West Side Story without the music and set in the Bronx of the '60s. The music is solid early '60s rock 'n' roll ( My Boyfriend's Back, The Wanderer ) and the acting is broad and often silly. Read full review

Frank Rich

By grafting stylistic affectations onto an otherwise naturalistic movie, Kaufman blunts the raw power that, is The Wanderers' greatest asset. Like his characters, he would have fared far better if he had stopped showing off and practiced a little self-control. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

The film survives cuts to deliver some great, gross, comic book capers. And rock history gets its most intelligent illustration since Mean Streets. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

All in all a fascinating film with an outstanding musical score consisting of jukebox hits from the period. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Despite an uneasy blend of nostalgia and violence, The Wanderers is a well-made and impressive film. Philip Kaufman, who also co-scripted with his wife, Rose [from the novel by Richard Price], has accurately captured the urban angst of growing up in the 1960s. Read full review

EmpireWilliam Thomas

Worth a look, if only for the surreal groupings of the gangs (The Wongs, the Del Bombers and the Fordham Baldies...that's right, they're bald). Read full review

Gary Arnold

The Wanderers is a well-made movie that leaves a so-what impression. [27 July 1979, p.B1]

Jack Kroll

Price's vision was realistic and romantic at the same time, the violence painful but also sensual, the mood charged with a sweet hopelessness. Philip Kaufman's tough but tender film emphasizes this double vision. It's like Grease with brass knuckles. [16 July 1979, p.93]

Jay Scott

You may find yourself having more kinky fun in The Wanderers than you have had in any American movie for a long time, but when you try to grasp the meaning of what you've seen, you find yourself clutching at moonbeams. [31 Aug 1979]