Towelhead
Warner Independent Pictures (WIP) | Release Date: September 12, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
57
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
14
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Film ThreatZack Haddad
Racism, teen sex, and war are all hot button issues. When you are a young person these things can seem new and confusing. In Alan Ball’s genius Towelhead, all of those above mentioned subjects go hand-in-hand in a truly wonderful cinematic experience. Read full review
100
PremierePriya Jain
To call Towelhead exploitative is to miss the point. What made Towelhead the novel so extraordinary was the honesty in Jasira's adolescent narrative voice, the genuine way she misguidedly, but honestly, conflates the sexual attention she receives with the parental affection she really needs. With the film, Ball, though he drops the book's first person narration, is faithful to that voice. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
Alternately disturbing, laceratingly satirical and affectingly poignant, the film, which he adapted from the novel, Towelhead, by Alicia Erian, is very much a companion piece to the Ball-penned "American Beauty" in its unwavering examination of the dirty little secrets and raging hypocrisies lurking just beyond all those manicured suburban lawns. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The movie belongs to the fifth-billed Bishil, a truly gutsy young actress who captures the essence of young female desire in all its adolescent confusion. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
The result is a movie about the many forms of social and sexual abuse that does not make the abusee a victim but victor. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The movie puts Jasira -- and the audience -- through the wringer, but it also makes the ride worth it. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
The story builds to a feverish pitch and then never reaches a satisfactory conclusion. But while it’s onscreen, the film moves, incites, and jabs, all while reminding us how difficult it is to grow up female and sane in this world. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Ball may not have the answers but he eloquently and forcefully explores some of the potential ramifications. The ending may be too pat, but the journey to get there - bitter, spicy, and poignant - more than compensates for any last-minute fumbles. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
A blackly funny provocation. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneTasha Robinson
Everything about the film is aggressively provocative, in both senses of the word. Read full review
70
Washington PostNeely Tucker
It's clever and original with an excellent cast. Ball's script catches a lot of the novel's pop, often word for word. I laughed a lot. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
As it becomes clear that Ball, in essence, has just restaged American Beauty with a socially conscious paint job, the sensationalism of Towelhead looks more and more like a dramatic tic. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
Beautifully acted and accomplishes exactly what writer/director Alan Ball set out to accomplish. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The heart of the movie is really in Jasira's moments with her father, a mass of contradictions that Macdissi plays with comic ferocity and genuine feeling. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The film is superbly acted (especially by Macdissi, who makes the father a borderline hysteric), but it's hard to know what to feel except, "How can any girl navigate this oversexualized culture?" Read full review
60
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
This third-act redemption raises Towelhead several notches, but it still ends up feeling like a well-acted and well-intentioned after-school special, a long way from the vividness and texture of Ball's television work. Read full review
60
The New York TimesStephen Holden
A crude but scathing portrait of suburban life. Read full review
55
NPRBob Mondello
The performances are nicely calibrated, even when the director isn't meshing them into a persuasive whole. Summer Bishil makes Jasira an appealing naif -- smart, precocious and curious, if too easily led by hormones. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comRoger Ebert
Towelhead presents material that cries out to be handled with quiet empathy and hammers us with it. I understand what the film is trying to do, but not why it does it with such crude melodrama. The tone is all wrong for a story of child sexuality and had me cringing in my seat. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Towelhead is transgressive without being effectively subversive, gutsy to no particular end. It simply lacks style, which counts for so much in this sort of thing. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
From its title on down, Towelhead alarms and manipulates, and succeeds in goading the audience like a schoolyard bully, but apart from Bishil's harrowing attempts to find herself, the strings stay too visible. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesGary Goldstein
On the upside, newcomer Summer Bishil turns in a gutsy, quietly riveting performance as Jasira. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The potency of the acting is also undercut by leaden pacing and a sense of claustrophobia. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
What he (Ball) intends as knife-edge realism instead comes across as another con job. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
The 19-year-old actress Summer Bishil captures the terrifying combination of lubricity and innocence that is being 13. Her performance is the truest thing in a movie that, for all its good intentions, feels thoroughly phony and mildly embarrassing. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Ball's snide humor and cynical arrogance undercut his message at every turn. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
As a director Ball amplifies the flaws in his own writing; his supporting characters are too broadly pitched to take seriously, and he tends to smack you in the face with the point of every scene. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
As a first-time feature director, though, he (Ball) seldom lets the material speak for itself. Every shot is a statement, every scene sells an attitude. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Ball's trying to be honest about adolescent coming of age, but since he's dishonest about everything else, the movie collapses in on itself. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
So disturbing it makes you uncomfortable watching it. Read full review
20
Village VoiceNick Pinkerton
Ball, who can't conceive of human motives beyond the hypertrophic, smutty sexuality that's his stock in trade, primly divides his characters into avatars of Sick Repression or Healthy Liberation. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Ball knows one trick, and it's sure over. Read full review
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