Average Rating: 3.6/10
Reviews Counted: 20
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 18
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Critic Reviews: 4
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 4
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Average Rating: 2.7/5
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Filmmaker Jason Freeland draws inspiration from the eponymous song for this tale of five lost souls attempting to navigate the treacherous urban landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. April is an ambitious beauty in search of success, but can she learn to get by and keep on her clothes at the same time? Sally St. Clair is a sexy realtor with a secret past. She's got a great eye for spotting lost souls, and thrives on giving them direction in life. One of those lost souls is Nathan, her new
May 30, 2008 Wide
Nov 18, 2008
Lionsgate
All Critics (20) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (3) | Rotten (18) | DVD (6)
Their lives eventually intersect, but in more or less arbitrary ways.
Slow ride to nowhere.
A low-rent answer to Robert Altmanā(TM)s Short Cuts.
If we're meant to take these threads as a tapestry of L.A., then Freeland clearly needs to stop watching Robert Altman DVDs and go outside to see what the real world is actually like.
Paints a convincing, if dizzying picture of Tinseltown as a dangerous den of iniquity that eats away at one's optimism until you capitulate and become just as jaded and hardened as the vultures who have made a career out of preying on the naive and needy.
Freeland's film offers a poor man's Los Angeles opus.
This ensemble piece works if you know Los Angeles. After all, it's very possible for a homeless kid, pot-smoking Realtor, young model and a number of perverts to cross paths in that town.
Sophomore writer/director Freeland doesn't quite feel like the host of this particular "garden party," but rather like the party's Sabrina, secretly spying from the sidelines.
Oddly, halfway through when Freeland strains our credulity even further, the film finally feels fresh
A bit like Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), taking a look at a cross-section of Los Angeles characters, though it runs less than half the length and, conversely, half the depth.
The characters aren't interesting, and the stories toggle between tawdry and ridiculous.
They're not a likeable bunch, to be sure, but the bigger problem is that there's little resonance to their stories.
It's a production in search of a movie.
Willa Holland is the one good thing about Garden Party -- not because of her performance (which is neither good or bad) but for that nostalgia she evoked in me for young Fairuza [Balk].
A dreary drama about a group of selfish and amoral characters whose lives intersect in Los Angeles.
A blandly pointless roundelay of bad acting, forgettable characters and flat drama.
There's neither brilliance nor bite to this look at innocence lost. Next time, go Nathanael West, young man.
A fatally fractured, disconnected mosaic of unappealing, marginal Hollywood types haphazardly interconnecting.
A tapestry of intersecting Hollywood lives that illuminates nothing except for writer-director Jason Freeland's obvious fondness for Short Cuts.
Garden Party has the feel of a made-for-TV look at life in Los Angeles. The actors and actresses that we've grown accustomed to seeing in the passenger seat are given semi-leading roles. Vinessa Shaw is sexy and sultry, allowing for the possibly the only stand out performance of the film, though Willa Holland of The
November 23, 2011Super Reviewer
Two stars is still being gracious. Weed, porn, underage drinking, porn, weed, kinky pictures and weed.
January 19, 2009
Super Reviewer
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