Pretty Persuasion Reviews
Top CriticThe material in Pretty Persuasion needed to be handled as heavy drama, or played completely for comedy, and by trying to have it both ways, the movie has it neither way.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Reminds me of a half-hour TV series that has a great pilot episode, then falls apart in subsequent installments.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Too broadly played to achieve its dark satirical aspirations and too downright silly to pass for a serious commentary on contemporary society.
It's so smug about it and pleased with itself.
St. Paul Pioneer Press
An often-funny movie that has two dumb ideas for every good one.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Washington Times
Pretty Persuasion thinks it's smarter than everyone in the audience. It's not.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
EricDSnider.com
What Pretty Persuasion seems to want most of all is to be outrageous,
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| Original Score: C
Pretty Persuasion considers itself snarky black comedy, one of those self-consciously 'outrageous' artifacts that means to shock even as it amuses.
Combustible Celluloid
Most of the problem behind this misshapen lump of a movie is that Siega comes from a long line of music-video and TV directors who can't... sustain a feature film.
Now Playing Magazine
Has a streak of originality a mile long and about an inch deep.
Full Review
| Original Score: D+
Spirituality and Practice
This black comedy's mean-spiritedness comes in one size that fits all.
Full Review | Original Score: 1/5
SPLICEDWire
Puerile social satire, stinging only insomuch as its unsophisticated wit and overwhelming smugness are painful to sit through.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
(Marcus) Siega plays racism, class disdain, ignorance and self-absorption for glib laughs in his equally glib satire...
Full Review
| Original Score: D
The movie wants so badly to be mentioned in the same breath as Heathers or Election that it's not even funny. Really, I mean it, this charred-black comedy is not even funny.
Full Review
| Original Score: D-
Skander Halim's script and Siega's direction often clash with their own very dark plot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Pretty Persuasion is so exploitative and misogynistic that its last-minute dramatic turns and pleas for tolerance and understanding come off as manipulative as its heroine.
| Original Score: 2/4
Partly a character study, partly a monster movie (with the girl as the monster) and partly a satire of American values in the modern age, the film is also, alas, only partly successful.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Leaves no gender, race, class or religion untouched in its scabrous effort to show how cruel humans can be. But it also leaves viewers with no one at all to like, or believe.
| Original Score: 1.5/4
