Viva
Cult Epics | Release Date: May 2, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
It takes skill — a certain sly, even perverse nimbleness of craft — to make an homage to schlock movies that treats them as works of art. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Biller obviously feels for these plywood people she's created. She surrounds them with rich color and eye-popping décor, and fills them with the awareness that as awkward as their sex games may be, they may one day miss what they stood for. Read full review
80
EmpireSimon Crook
The plywood acting’s pretty funny, as is the coy sex; what amazes is the beautifully lurid, near-fetishistic set design. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineEric Henderson
Viva‘s intentionally flat performances and flatter double entendres...mercilessly satirize the Playboy mindset even as the film revels in the kitschiness of it all. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
While desperation and a critique lurk under all these garish surfaces, neither emerges because Ms. Biller, finally, adores this milieu too much to tear it apart. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesGary Goldstein
While writer-director-star Anna Biller often strikes an uneasy balance between camp and spoof, milks the jokes either too much or too little, and isn't a good enough actress to play a bad one (the performances here are purposely arch or vacuous), she's concocted a curio that's as watchable for its intended awfulness as for the morbid curiosity it prompts about what will come next. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The results are visually exacting if ideologically muddled. Biller's trying to find ways to make the old misogyny usefully ironic. But the acting is so amateurish, partly by accident and partly by design, that the film remains confined to an exercise in replicative style. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonTom Huddleston
As a self-conscious exercise in kitsch graverobbing, ‘Viva’ succeeds through a combination of cultural nous and sheer aesthetic audacity. Read full review
60
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Viva...is faithful to those cult-adored obscurities in nearly every detail, including their soporific pace. Here, however, sly in-jokes come often enough to make said pacing funny in itself. Performances are slightly stilted or over-the-top in ways true to the original genre. Read full review
50
Village VoiceVadim Rizov
About half an hour of this was enough for me—long before the orgy, LSD drugging, and hallucination animation, I'd gotten the joke—though Biller's re-creation is not only right-on but rigorous. Read full review
40
Total FilmMatt Mueller
For all its garish aesthetics, sly feminism and wall-to-wall nudity, writer/director Anne Biller’s camp-com is almost too much of a good thing, outstaying its welcome at a paint-drying two hours. Read full review
40
The GuardianAndrew Pulver
As a performer, Biller is fearless in her pursuit of perfectly recreated cheesecake, but is a twitchy and not especially charismatic presence. Where her film lets itself down, though, is it's simply not funny. Read full review
40
Time OutMelissa Anderson
Deliberate camp (to paraphrase Susan Sontag) is never as successful as pure, or naive, camp. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Viva needed to be shaved down to about 70 minutes, the better to really let loose and jettison some over-the-top jokiness. Read full review
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