Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010)
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Reviews Counted: 107
Fresh: 103 | Rotten: 4
An amusing, engrossing look at underground art, Exit Through the Gift Shop entertains as it deflates the myths and hype surrounding its subjects.
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Critic Reviews: 29
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 1
An amusing, engrossing look at underground art, Exit Through the Gift Shop entertains as it deflates the myths and hype surrounding its subjects.
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Average Rating: 4.2/5
User Ratings: 21,046
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Movie Info
Exit Through the Gift Shop marks the feature-film debut of notorious street artist Banksy. The documentary's focus is French-born L.A. thrift-shop owner Thierry Guetta, whose apparent compulsion to videotape every moment of his life led him to document the phenomenon of contemporary street art. Guetta's cousin, a street artist known as Space Invader, allowed the avid cameraman to tape him as he illegally spread his artwork, and Space Invader also introduced him to other street artists, whose
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Cast
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Banksy
Banksy -
Rhys Ifans
Narrator -
Thierry Guetta
Thierry Guetta -
Space Invader
Space Invader -
Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey
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Exit Through The Gift Shop Trailer & Photos
All Critics (107) | Top Critics (29) | Fresh (105) | Rotten (4) | DVD (4)
The plain fact is that, on some level, it doesn't matter whether the film is true or not. Either way, it's fascinating. Either way, we learn a lot. Either way, it's a great film.
Top CriticA provocative and absorbing exploration of what constitutes art, the creative process and the power of hype to triumph over talent.
Hoax or not, Exit Through the Gift Shop ends up energizing, aggravating, enjoyable and revealing. Is it art or isn't it? Who knows? Apparently no one.
Put-on, satire, mockumentary, goof? Whatever it is, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is an original.
Like Banksy's best street work, it pushes and prods our gullibility buttons and sends the mind swirling with questions of artistic authenticity and intent.
Exit Through the Gift Shop offers an absorbing glimpse of a bracingly subversive slice of the culture, as well as some tantalizing images of Banksy at work.
Banksy exposes the con-job that is modern art for what it is.
Whatever your view of Britain's most famous street artist, prepare to be teased, provoked and possibly enraged by the release of his first movie.
Just as clever as the work of Sasha Baron Cohen, but not nearly as culturally worthwhile because it is not nearly as politically candid.
An irritatingly misguided and pointless piece of work...
Too ironic by half, this film is hobbled most of all by principal Thierry Guetta, that I find insufferably banal. As a satire on a market-driven art world, it is fairly toothless. Why it has garnered rave reviews is the biggest puzzle of all.
Energetic, exciting, entertaining, and at times illegal, Exit Through The Gift Shop is a wicked treat.
Those tricky questions that lie in the chasm between art and commerce are raised naturally through the progression of the narrative, whether that narrative is partially fabricated or not.
Curious docu about street artists with some strong language.
Since virtually anything can be considered art, the term has become virtually meaningless. This documentary proves it.
The behind-the-scenes insight into the techniques of illegal street art is fascinating, as is the art-market critique..
Illustrates how our insistence and abilities in judging and evaluating art are often arbitrary, contradictory, and idiotic.
It's funny, playful, and intriguing in a way that makes me want to see it again.
A cinematic treatise on the vagaries of authorship, trends, and the art world itself, Exit Through the Gift Shop is funny and thought-provoking where most documentaries present themselves as trustworthy and invariably factual.
After all those debates about the meaning of art ... [who] would have thought that the best and most incisive comments on the argument would have come from street-punk Banksy?
Regardless of its motives, Gift Shop is a superb work, one that demands the audience ask questions that don't always go down easily...
A strange oxymoron of a film, like a straight-faced Spinal Tap or a Man On Wire for liars.
The street artist known as Banksy is witty, he's smart, he's subversive -- and he's compelling. So it stands to reason that the street-art doc he ostensibly hijacked would be all those things, too.
Confused yet? Good. Banksy probably wants you exactly that way.
Audience Reviews for Exit Through The Gift Shop
Super Reviewer
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- Banksy: I don't think Thierry played by the rules in some ways; but, then there are not suposed to be any rules. So, I don't really know what mine is. I mean I always used to encourage everyone I met to make art, I used to think everyone should do it. I don't do that so much anymore.
- Banksy: I don't know what it means, Thierry is huge success and a rival in the art world. I mean, maybe, Thierry was a genius all along. Maybe, he got a bit lucky. Maybe, it means art is a bit of a joke.
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- Shepard Fairey: I do think the whole phenomenon of uh Thierry's obsession with street art, becoming a street artist, a lot of suckers buying into his show and him selling a lot of expensive art, um, very quickly. It is anthropologically, sociologically it's a fascinating thing to observe and maybe there's some things to be learned from it.
- Thierry Guetta: I feel good. I feel good as a Artist, to have a reputation, now. You know, an artist is not a guy that you see in one show and you can decide who it is or if he copies Banksy or if he copies uh Shepard Fairey or if he copies... It is about time. You'lll see in the time who I will be. Because, with time you will see my creativity. You will see if I am a real artist or not.
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- Banksy: Most artists spend years perfecting their craft finding their style. Thierry seems to have missed all those bits. I mean there's no one quite like Thierry. Even if his art looks quite a lot like everyones else's.
- Banksy: He kind of the rightful heir to Andy Warhol in a way. Andy Warhol made a statement by repeating famous icons until they became meaningless. But, he was extremely iconic in the way he did it. But, then Thierry really made them meaningless.
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Latest News on Exit Through The Gift Shop
January 6, 2011:
Exit Through the Gift Shop Confronts a New ClaimFilmmaker Joachim Levy has another question to add to the many surrounding "Exit Through the Gift...
April 16, 2010:
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Foreign Titles
- Faites le mur ! (FR)
Thierry Guetta has rarely let a moment of his life go unfilmed, and by coincidence - the street artist Space Invader is his cousin - he brings his obsessive zeal to bear on this particular underground, tracking down many of the biggest names for ride-alongs, filming them, and throwing the tapes in a bin... all under the premise that he's making a documentary. But Guetta is not making anything, merely documenting his unprecedented access to this specific scene - think of someone like Don Letts and the way he filmed The Clash, The Ramones, etc. And though Guetta finally manages to film Banksy, the movie he produces - at his "subjects'" urging - is, as Banksy says, "sh-t." Banksy says to Guetta, "Leave the footage with me, and go and make some of your own art," which Guetta does, under the name Mr. Brainwash (MBW), to rapid and spectacular financial success, basically by reproducing Banksy- and Warhol-style iconography in the right place, at the right time.
So what's so brilliant? Banksy manages to use the film to disown MBW, and to salvage the independence and integrity of the many street artists who might have gotten caught up in the "project," as MBW, despite his prolific ascent, has completely missed the point of street art: temporary subversion.
Though the odd piece - largely sculptures - can be saved and sold, by and large street art cannot last. Must not last. For Guetta to go into the business of "selling" street art is to expose himself as a profiteering hack, taking someone else's work and making his living off it...
...which, if you pay for this film, you are of course allowing Banksy to do. It's a rare piece from the master subversive that's intended to last, not for the purpose of selling it, but rather, for the purpose of protecting a legacy. It might be a bit mean-spirited in that it turns the knife in an admirer, and yet, I'm not sure Guetta would see it that way... this is more exposure than he'd ever otherwise have gotten, his big break, and he's all over the last half of the film, claiming with a straight face to know what he's doing with his art, almost preaching to the masses.
Effectively, Banksy is saying "We won't let you destroy us by making a movie about us - instead, we'll destroy you by making a movie about you." And yet, in its appeal to either audience - the hyper-underground or the hyper-uninitiated - the work may still fool some into thinking it's a collaboration, and as a third party, I could even be convinced it's symbiotic, in a way.
But never forget who signed this. Banksy is the subject making the film, and declaredly refusing to be the subject of it. Magnificent appropriation... of his own voice! Google "Gramsci organic intellectual" if you don't believe me. This is brilliant stuff.
(Good God: I hope the hoax rumours - that this is a mockumentary, not a documentary - aren't true. That would make me the biggest sucker of all... and nevertheless prove the film's brilliance, only more so.)