Shut Up Little Man! Reviews
October 14, 2011
What starts as a clever comedy piece about the popularity of the actual recordings becomes something more poignant when director Matthew Bate starts asking questions about privacy and unwanted celebrity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5.0
October 13, 2011
The unsuspecting stars (who died in 1992 and '96, respectively) begin to seem less like nightmare neighbors and more like the victims of rampant exploitation and voyeurism.
October 9, 2011
It's a fascinating, occasionally nauseating tale of wasted human life, energy, and brain cells.
October 8, 2011
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/5
October 7, 2011
Bate's facile and dispiriting documentary never makes a case for why this particular slice of audio verit required resurrecting from the graveyard of pop culture arcana.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/5
September 23, 2011
Bate chronicles the whole wooly story with admirable clarity and resourcefulness, even when a lack of visual material forces him to resort too often to reenactment and dramatization.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
September 22, 2011
Casts a wide net of inquiry over this sometimes appalling story, which raises timely questions about the differences between creation and exploitation.
Original Score: 3/4
September 16, 2011
It's a strange story, and the stylish and well-edited documentary "Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure" gets it down. But yet it doesn't quite get it.
Original Score: 2.5/4
September 16, 2011
For the most part, this is a feature-length documentary that begs to be turned into a YouTube clip -- junky and ephemeral.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
September 15, 2011
Goes from funny to not funny in about the length of time it takes for the lawyers to get involved.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
September 15, 2011
Makes the "Shut Up" phenomenon feel as if it meant something, unlike the here-this-morning, gone-this-afternoon viral sensations of today.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
September 15, 2011
Manages to ask some heavy questions while maintaining a light tone.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
September 15, 2011
There is a lot more going on here than the story of a largely forgotten underground sensation.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
September 14, 2011
Does an expert job on tracing the evolution of SULM! from lark to "art," and how a cult formed around two middle-aged lives of loud desperation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
September 13, 2011
The tapes are great. More than just a flophouse Punch and Judy show, the Raymond vs. Peter dustups elevate cruel bickering to a ritual through which we live life's pain.
August 25, 2011
"Shut Up, Little Man! An Audio Misadventure" has to rank right up there as one of the oddest films of the year. But odd in a very good way.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
March 25, 2011
Even as a nascent example of a now-burgeoning trend, however, this initially intriguing doc never manages to justify its own superlative praise for Ray and Peter.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
February 1, 2011
We're all, in one way or another, that creep in the basement hoping to "hear the line" just one more time.
Original Score: A-
January 26, 2011
Alternately hilarious and discomfiting, and finally rather poignant.