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Critics Consensus: The sex may be explicit, but Mitchell integrates it into the characters' lives and serves the whole story up with a generous dose of sweetness and wit.
Critic Consensus: The sex may be explicit, but Mitchell integrates it into the characters' lives and serves the whole story up with a generous dose of sweetness and wit.
All Critics (126) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (85) | Rotten (41) | DVD (7)
Shortbus is not, above all, 'dirty.' What it is, in fact, is a nice movie, one of the nicest to come down the pike since March of the Penguins.
One woman's quest for the perfect orgasm may strike sophisticated viewers as the stuff of sexual farce at best, but Sook-Yin Lee's Sofia brings both emotion and eroticism to the proceedings, and for this Mr. Mitchell should be commended.
It runs out of energy before the end.
Few arthouse directors have put real sex to such narratively constructive and credibly, humorously human use.
A film that's thoughtful and exuberant, achingly sad and wildly funny.
A rather sweet, wistful little movie that just happens to have a lot of explicit sex in it.
Shortbus could stand to lose 30 minutes off its flabbily melancholic denouement.
Those with small bus issues, cast aside your inadequacies and embrace the juicy pumping heart of this oddly sweet film.
In Mitchell's casting-a roster of unknowns results in uneven performances that border on bad sometimes, yet he manages to keep it all on track.
This isn't an exploit into pornographic ideals, but a movie with genuine ideas that are completely freed from political correctness.
Genuinely enlivening
Director John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and The Angry Inch") flaunts cinematic tradition with a raucous sex comedy filled with truly shocking sex acts that underscore his vision of New York as a playground of debauchery.
If this firm didn't have considerable artistic and intellectual merit, it would be porn. But it does have merit and it has a LOT more to say than prurience or lust. In fact, such sentiments would be missing the point entirely. It's a brave and brash film about sexuality and relationships that makes one wonder -- why hasn't a film like this been made before?
Super Reviewer
Okay, honestly, I feel like the sex scenes were put there just to be titillating. Not effective.
I nearly turned it off in the first 20 minutes. Shocking, graphic sex. But when the main character (a sex therapist who can't achieve orgasm, played by Sook-Yin Lee) turns up at Shortbus - a sex club named after the little school buses, filled with "the challenged and the gifted," says the host - the content makes sense, and the almost-story begins to take shape as she and the other characters look for that perfect chemistry, however weird that may be. Mainly, I think this is a film about facing your biggest sexual difficulties straight-on, and by the end, it pulled me in, and the content didn't shock me anymore. A tough watch, borderline pornographic in the beginning, but a film with a big heart that I wound up understanding... more or less. There are some story holes. Decent, though.
If you go into "Shortbus" with only hearing about the graphic sex, you will be surprised to find that it's actually incredibly funny and enlightening. "Shortbus" is not for everyone, obviously, just the narrative alone could turn viewers off, let alone the nudity and real sexual contact. But, if exploring characters through their sexuality is up your ally, then this will be an extremely satisfying experience. The sex, while explicit, drives the story; there is always a reason for what you are seeing. You need to look into the sex and not at it. The performances are real and funny (the actors, for the most part, all wrote their own roles) and John Cameron Mitchell directs the proceedings with vigor, delight and plenty of energy. While "Shortbus" can get dark, it works well as a comedy, a drama and a great commentary on the sexual state of America in the 00s. "Shortbus" is a unique film to be sure, and an extremely brave one.
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