Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang Reviews
December 14, 2014
It's a cinematic giraffe, both awkward and overreaching.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
June 13, 2006
It's a movie that becomes so taken with itself, that it seems to be doing the laughing instead of the viewer.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
December 10, 2005
Perhaps a better title for the self-referential noir comedy Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang would be Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge.
Original Score: 2.5/4
December 10, 2005
After about a half-hour it became very clear to me that Black had no real idea what his story was and didn't particularly care to find out.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
November 18, 2005
It's not Black's material that misses; it's his refusal to let anyone -- especially the audience -- take a breather between all those bangs and kisses.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
November 17, 2005
[Director Shane] Black is so determined to break down the 'fourth wall,' he loses sight of all reality. His film is too gimmicky for its own good.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
November 14, 2005
An occasionally funny and entertaining film that ultimately tries too hard and cannot maintain the breakneck pace that the first act antes up.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
November 11, 2005
I was at first entertained but eventually exhausted by all the movie references, which become maddeningly self-congratulatory.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
November 11, 2005
... a smug, self-referential blend of twisty Raymond Chandler-style mystery and "Pulp Fiction"-style spoof of same.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
November 10, 2005
Annoyingly glib...Drowns in its own jokiness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
November 10, 2005
While Downey's rumpled insouciance jibes with the movie's jaded, narcissistic tone, it's a hard tone to take for a hundred minutes or so.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
November 3, 2005
Don't Don't Go Go.
Full Review
| Original Score: .5/4
October 31, 2005
All affectation and no affect...by the end the smug artificiality of it all has become well-nigh intolerable.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
October 29, 2005
Misogynistic, homophobic, smug, and pointless, Black's auteur debut is an exercise in self-reflexivity, and the image reflected back is ugly.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
October 26, 2005
Vulgar, noisy, pointless and stupid.
October 25, 2005
...has the bitter irony of someone who used to love the movies until he started making them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
October 21, 2005
Kiss Kiss is so inside Hollywood, so anxious to bite the hand that fed Black, that it plays like an elaborate prank.
Original Score: 2.5/4
October 21, 2005
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang contains a lot of comedy and invention, but doesn't much benefit from its clever style.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
October 20, 2005
Black winds up sabotaging his own material when another director's perspective could have successfully meshed parody with the hallucinatory underbelly of pulp fiction.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
October 20, 2005
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang turns into a film that is too ostentatiously pleased with itself, so in love with its own cleverness it doesn't notice it's darn near worn you out.