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Reviews Counted:51
Fresh:45
Rotten:6
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: Director Bujalski continues to give cinematic voice to awkward, literate twentysomethings with noteworthy smarts and tenderness.
Theatrical Release:Sep 1, 2006 Limited
Synopsis: Alan (Justin Rice), a musician whose band has just broken up, shows up in New York to pursue his burgeoning rock and roll career. He starts by searching for a drummer for a show he's already lined... [More]
Bujalski stubbornly refuses to stick to the accepted constructs of story structure or character development, content to sit back and calmly carve off a thick, juicy slice of a life that's all the more sumptuous for its texture.
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The movie is made of small moments; they add up in your mind to something bigger later, the way life does outside of movies.
Any other romantic melodrama would have them bubbling over with passion, but these characters are painfully tentative and believably so, given that they're both betraying someone they care about.
Bujalski is a shrewd comic observer, and astute enough a director to get the most of his engaging actors.
Mutual Appreciation appropriates a seemingly improvised vérité style that's ideal for a cast of characters of no tremendous ambition.
Top CriticMutual Appreciation shows life as contingent, conditional, enigmatic, never finally realized, as, in short, everything that the Harvey Mansfields of the world abhor, and it shows why to accept this kind of life is an act of strength.
Indebted to the films of Jim Jarmusch and John Cassavetes, Bujalski invests this love triangle with real empathy for his bumbling, hyper-articulate characters, and a sly, edgy humour.
One of Bujalski's gifts is his ability to give every part, no matter how big or small, a sense of intelligence and life that extends beyond the frame and running time, and in this his work recalls the best of both Mike Leigh and Richard Linklater.
Shooting in black-and-white 16mm, Bujalski nods to the pre-Sundance personal cinema of the '50s and '60s. His little circle of pals, though, offers little to outsiders looking in.
The film's mood and style are pitched somewhere between '60s American indie and French New Wave and, as you watch these people, they seem painfully, amusingly on-target.
Top CriticThis new film will likely earn even fewer fans but it's an even more accomplished work.
Every scene in Bujalski's films is a little awkward, and just right.
It certainly doesn't help that these characters just aren't worth a two-hour investment. Unless you're a fan of independent music, there's little chance you'll want to spend that much time with them.
Just because you shoot semi-improvised scenes in black-and-white doesn’t mean you’re the new Jim Jarmusch.
If this is the sound of a new generation, then it may be the first generation cautious enough to embrace friendship as mightier than love.
Top CriticThe dark side of a Waldorf education.
Director Andrew Bujalski and his amazing cast create such a unique and addicting experience that these 110 minutes go by in no time at all and the only thing you want when it’s all over is more.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new awkward.
Bujalski perfectly skewers what you might call the "sort-of" generation: educated, mid-20s white Americans hemmed in by their own non-committal uncertainty.
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