Opening

72% World War Z Jun 21
77% Monsters University Jun 21
61% The Bling Ring Jun 21
60% Maniac Jun 21
100% A Hijacking Jun 21
66% Unfinished Song Jun 21
100% The Attack Jun 21
—— The Haunting of Helena Jun 21

Top Box Office

55% Man of Steel $116.6M
85% This Is the End $20.7M
50% Now You See Me $11.0M
71% Fast & Furious 6 $9.6M
38% The Purge $8.3M
34% The Internship $7.1M
62% Epic $6.3M
87% Star Trek Into Darkness $6.3M
11% After Earth $4.1M
78% Iron Man 3 $3.0M

Coming Soon

—— How To Make Money Selling Drugs Jun 26
—— White House Down Jun 28
—— The Heat Jun 28
56% I'm So Excited! Jun 28

Showboy (2002)

tomatometer

50

Average Rating: 4/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 3

No consensus yet.

audience

31

liked it
Average Rating: 2.8/5
User Ratings: 730

My Rating

Movie Info

Written and directed by co-stars Lindy Heymann and Christian Taylor, Showboy is a comedic mockumentary about a Hollywood writer trying to make it onto the Las Vegas stage. Real-life British filmmaker Heymann takes her documentary crew into Southern California to report on Britons working in Hollywood. She overhears Taylor (a real writer and producer for the HBO series Six Feet Under) getting fired by executive producer Alan Ball. The documentary crew then follows Taylor to Las Vegas, where he

Unrated,

Gay & Lesbian, Comedy

,

Aug 17, 2004

Regent Releasing - Official Site External Icon

Watch It Now

ADVERTISEMENT

All Critics (16) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (4) | DVD (2)

This would-be satire isn't funny enough to be entertaining, nor is it clever enough to fool us.

May 5, 2004
Hollywood Reporter
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Slyly amusing yet poignant.

April 22, 2004 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Showboy is enjoyable if you're comfortable with the mix of fact and fiction and don't care what's true and what's not.

April 15, 2004 Full Review Source: Dallas Morning News
Dallas Morning News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A clever hide-and-seek game of reality versus fiction that reveals itself as not the movie you thought it was when the final credits roll.

April 15, 2004 Full Review Source: New York Times
New York Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A no-budget vanity production that almost instantly wears out its welcome.

April 8, 2004
New York Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

An ill-conceived, often implausible hybrid of fact and fiction.

April 6, 2004 Full Review Source: Village Voice
Village Voice
Top Critic IconTop Critic

a legitimately smart and appealing work

September 30, 2004

The most entertaining part of Christian Taylor's "Showboy" is deciphering fact from fiction... and that's not a compliment.

August 27, 2004 Full Review Source: EDGE Boston
EDGE Boston

Silly only begins to describe this, but along the way, bitter truths are revealed and some real laughs delivered.

August 8, 2004 Full Review Source: Film Journal International
Film Journal International

Made all the more fascinating by keeping a small and twisted foot in a bizarre reality befitting the glitz and glamour of show business.

June 30, 2004 Full Review Source: Movie Views

plays for laughs extremely well, though it's all dry as the Las Vegas air

June 13, 2004 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com
Filmcritic.com

Witty, touching, and slightly wacky.

May 25, 2004 Full Review Source: Film Threat
Film Threat

To their credit, the filmmakers don't repair their hero's aching heart, but they do grant him a brief moment in the Vegas spotlight, surely all that any chorus boy (or girl) could ask.

April 29, 2004 Full Review Source: L.A. Weekly
L.A. Weekly

Taylor, while perhaps a little small to become a real Vegas showboy, makes for a very charismatic hero, while Joaquin Baca-Asay's cinematography captures all the glitz and slightly tawdry glamour of the Vegas strip.

April 9, 2004 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Audience Reviews for Showboy

A young British documentarian, Lindy Heymann, is given the assignment of finding a successful young British subject living in the US and making a career in show-business. She chooses as her subject Christian Taylor, a writer on the HBO series Six Feet Under. Just as she's about to film her final interview with him, she accidentally overhears him get fired by the shows creator, Alan Ball. Christian flees to Las Vegas, and Lindy follows. When she catches up with him, Christian, who does not realise she knows he was fired, claims he is doing research for a new script he is writing - an action thriller set in Vegas. What follows is a brilliantly clever mockumentary, as Lindy pursues Christian (at first reluctantly) as he tries out for auditions as a dancer, in what he claims is part of his research for his script. The boundaries of truth and fiction blur as Christian soon becomes obsessed with the audition process and his research becomes ever more "method". This is a very touching film. Christian Taylor (who really was a writer on Six Feet Under - though everything else is fictitious) is a brilliant presence and seems to have a natural talent; I frequently forgot that this was a mockumentary and not a documentary. The film raises questions about deception, ambition, and identity. It's also quietly heartbreaking - a scene where Christian discloses his awful feeling of loneliness, and another where he has an emotional meltdown in a dance class, are powerful, and the film is presented very realistically and without winking to the audience. A nice surprise to a film I've put off watching for a long time. And I've just read it won Directorial Debut at the British Independent Awards..
April 3, 2007
danieljparsons

Super Reviewer

[b]DVD [/b]First Viewing, 1 Heymann & Taylor film seen

The story is simple. It's the execution which makes it unique. Christian Taylor is a writer for "Six Feet Under." While a documentary crew is making a film about him, his boss fires him. Christian doesn't think that the film crew knows, so he pretends to "research" for a script where he must become a dancer - a showboy. [i]Showboy [/i]is done in the form of a mockumentary, but it is nowhere up to par with the films of Christopher Guest. Nowhere as realistic as [i]Spinal Tap[/i] or as funny as [i]Waiting For Guffman[/i].
August 19, 2004
Academock
Jason Young
No quotes approved yet for Showboy. Logged in users can submit quotes.

Discussion Forum

There are no discussion threads for Showboy yet.

What's Hot On RT

24 Frames
24 Frames

Pictures from a zombie nation

Blue Jasmine
Blue Jasmine

Woody Allen in San Francisco

<em>The Hobbit</em>
The Hobbit

See the Desolation of Smaug trailer!

Summer Scorecard
Summer Scorecard

Where does This Is the End rank?

Help | About | Jobs | Critics Submission | API | Licensing | Mobile