Average Rating: 4.4/10
Reviews Counted: 76
Fresh: 21 | Rotten: 55
The lurid display of camp soon turns tedious.
Average Rating: 4.1/10
Critic Reviews: 29
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 23
The lurid display of camp soon turns tedious.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 35,320
After profiling Monica Lewinsky, Billy Haynes, and Tammy Faye Bakker, documentarians Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato make their feature debut with this true-life tale of the rapid climb and lurid demise of a flamboyant young club promoter in late-'80s/early-'90s Manhattan. Based on James St. James' nonfiction account Disco Bloodbath as well as on the writer/directors' own 1998 documentary, Party Monster features former child star Macaulay Culkin as Michael Alig, a Midwestern teen determined to
R, 1 hr. 37 min.
Sep 5, 2003 Wide
Feb 10, 2004
$0.3M
Strand Releasing
All Critics (82) | Top Critics (29) | Fresh (21) | Rotten (55) | DVD (3)
It's the drunk-guy- at-the-party syndrome: The only one truly entertained by the clown with the lamp shade on his head is the clown with the lamp shade on his head -- or folks similarly inebriated.
A mess.
In the end, for all the vibrancy, there's not much there there. Maybe that's the point, but I doubt it.
You haven't seen this many outrageous costumes since the Halloween parade on Cedar Springs.
There are many ways of depicting an innocent's descent into hell, but the camp approach is surely the least advisable.
Gracelessly executed, it throws out mock documentary, fantasy sequences and rapid montages, but still drags on woefully, and looks like it was soaked in dirty water.
Rule No. 1: If you use black humor in a film about real-life characters and events, make sure you have a feel for it first.
Culkin se esforça, mas não convence como o bissexual Michael Alig. Em contrapartida, Seth Green rouba o filme com sua ótima performance.
So awful, it's almost good.
Never has the Manhattan club scene ever looked so tedious; this film makes a powerful argument for staying home and renting a movie.
Perhaps Party Monster's limited distribution will keep this clunker from interrupting Seth Green's rise to the top of the Hollywood food chain.
Memo to Macaulay Culkin: When your latest cinematic 'comeback' attempt is a film like Party Monster, maybe remaining in career limbo wasn't such a bad idea.
The look, like Culkin's self-consciously manic performance, is all surface -- which may be the point of profiling these empty lives, but not enough reason to make us watch.
Fact-based story of drugs and death in "clubland" is boring and banal, failing in its attempt to shock and scandalize.
We begin the film not knowing what brought Michael and James together. We end, after a too-long 98 minutes, precisely the same way.
"... equal parts freakish fashion show and tawdry melodrama of the rise and fall of a superficial celebrity."
As a human document 'Party Monster' is pretty much a disaster...shapeless and sloppy.
Like Alig, Party Monster is a colorful mess, all style and substances and little else.
Based on the true life story of infamous "club kid" Micahel Alig, this film saw Macaulay Culkin return to films after a long absence, ready to put his child star image to rest. In that regard, this is a successful film, and his performance is quite good. The other performances aren't too shabby either, and the cast has
August 18, 2011Super Reviewer
When I started to watch this movie I wasn't at all aware what it was about. I just saw that MaCaulay Culkin and Seth Green were in it and thought, "Cool! Maybe this'll be good." A lot of people say this movie was bad, that it was horribly acted, but I think they just couldn't get past Culkin's shortcomings. I don't
May 15, 2010Super Reviewer
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