Tiny Furniture
IFC Films | Release Date: November 12, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
4
Negative:
1
Watch Now
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumDec 11, 2010
Tiny Furniture is proof, against steep odds, that there are no small stories, only small storytellers. Read full review
100
New York PostV.A. MusettoDec 11, 2010
Whether Tiny Furniture is a mumblecore movie is an open question. It has many of the tell-tale signs of that ill-defined genre; although improvised dialogue, a mumblecore staple, is minimal. Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 7, 2010
Lena Dunham, the writer-director-star of the microbudget Tiny Furniture, has a distinctive comedic take on the world – a kind of haggard spiritedness. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 17, 2010
A darkly comic, piercing, and occasionally painful study of a young woman's quest for identity. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 9, 2010
The movie is full, assured and extremely wry. Read full review
85
MovielineMichelle OrangeDec 11, 2010
The complementary tone of droll but freighted psychodrama she strikes in Tiny Furniture feels like a significant but precarious achievement. I feel a pinch of worry for her - as I did for Aura - looking into a future of Rudins and Apatows. Read full review
80
The GuardianHenry BarnesMar 29, 2012
Dunham, who pads through much of this extremely well-written, often funny and very touching film in the semi-nude, doesn't give a damn about any of it. Read full review
80
EmpireDavid ParkinsonMar 26, 2012
Much-maligned it may be, but the so-called mumblecore movement continues to turn out gems. Lena Dunham's lo-fi, witty treatment of a semi-autobiographical tale adds another dozy to the canon. Read full review
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamMar 20, 2012
Tiny Furniture announces Dunham as a talent to watch. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 12, 2010
Pathos isn't Ms. Dunham's bag. What makes her film fascinating is the delicate mood it sustains. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 11, 2010
This is a quirky little comedy, not a film that will change your view of reality or anything, but it's funny, wrenching and sharply observed, with a dispassion that suggests a real artist is at work. Read full review
75
NPRBob MondelloDec 11, 2010
The end result is that Tiny Furniture plays like situation comedy, but with an overlay of performance art. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 11, 2010
It's the work of a filmmaker with a stunning future. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubDec 9, 2010
What Dunham lacks in polish, she makes up for in her ability to observe her generation, with the hardest truths coming at her own expense. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 8, 2010
It's hard enough for a director to work with actors, but if you're working with your own family in your own house and depicting passive aggression, selfishness and discontent and you produce a film this good, you can direct just about anybody in just about anything. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 7, 2010
A funny, affecting movie about growing up in the shadow of a formidable mom. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensDec 11, 2010
Tiny Furniture feels surprisingly assured, even elegant. There are those who will accuse Tiny Furniture of wildly inconsistent tonal shifts, and it is guilty of some, but I appreciated the way this movie kept upending my expectations. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 11, 2010
Tiny Furniture is at times more pleasurable to think about than it is to watch, more of a conceptual coup than an enjoyable experience. Read full review
70
VarietyJoe LeydonDec 11, 2010
What it doesn't have, to its credit, is a neat conclusion. In the end, the film appears to suggest that Aura likely will feel free to keep searching for herself, repeating mistakes and making new ones, because she has all the time in the world. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. HobermanDec 11, 2010
A comedy of youthful confusion that gets its kick not only for evoking a world of unromantic hookups, casual BJs, and iPhone porn, but for satirizing New York's bourgeois bohemia. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyDec 7, 2010
What the film does well is capture the confusion of the identity abyss of twentysomethings of a certain social class. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayDec 11, 2010
Tiny Furniture offers a 21st-century, East Coast spin on "The Graduate," but with comedy-writer-ish dialogue and a mannered style that never fully gels. Read full review
63
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreMar 16, 2011
Lena Dunham's amusing meander through "post graduate delirium," a relationship comedy about nothing so much as the permanent relationships of family and New Yorker's relationship with space - and the lack of it. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsDec 10, 2010
In skewering the neuroses of New York bohemians, Durham has left us too little to care about. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 9, 2010
Dunham has been justly praised for her determination in getting Tiny Furniture made, but the movie itself has been overpraised as a result. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 11, 2010
The funny thing? It all works reasonably well, especially if you have a yen for the urbane register of city kids and their amazingly cool parents. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoDec 7, 2010
A small film about enormous fears. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttDec 11, 2010
How she (Dunham) made her movie is more impressive or at least unique than the actual story she chooses to tell. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesDec 9, 2010
A tolerably warm bath of postcollegiate self-pity, salted with irony and self-mockery. Read full review
0
ObserverRex ReedDec 11, 2010
Lena Dunham makes a 98-minute home video seem like 98 days of hard labor. Read full review
More From This Movie

72 Critic Reviews

5.1 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL