Product Details

• Actors: Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, Lara Tosh, Jacob Reynolds, Darby Dougherty
• Directors: Harmony Korine
• Writers: Harmony Korine
• Producers: Cary Woods, Robin O'Hara, Ruth Vitale, Scott Macaulay, Stephen Chin
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• DVD Release Date: March 20, 2001
• Run Time: 89 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (355 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000059HA8
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,235 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Gummo" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

GUMMO - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

122 of 135 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like nothing you've ever seen on TV, May 27, 2003

By 

John M Flora "olioscourge.blogspot.com" (Brookland, AR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gummo (DVD)

Director Harmony Korine may or may not be the latest "enfant terrible," but he's certainly given us something to think about with "Gummo." He's given us about 90 minutes of in-your-face immersion into a culture that most of us only glimpse in "Cops" and other "reality" programs that deal with the hopeless, hapless people who make up the bottom strata of White America.
We suddenly find ourselves immersed in a culture where single moms huff glue with their teenage sons and their buddies and where boys hunt neighborhood cats with BB guns and sell the carcasses to a guy who supplies meat to Chinese restaurants. As the story develops, we learn the boys spend their cat money on glue and the services of a young prostitute who looks like Anna Nicole Smith with a lobotomy.
This movie is like a train wreck - at once horrifying and mesmerizing.
I disagree with an earlier reviewer who saw "Gummo" as an outrageous piece of elitism.
I think that charge misses the point. This is not some arrogant exposé of the quaint ways of the poor, it's a 90-minute tour of the self-perpetuating Culture of Stupidity that can be found on the fringes of every city and town in America. These are people who turn bad choices into a way of life because that's what their parents did and their parents before them. Yes, Korine packs the screen with enough geeks and freaks to populate a dozen circus sideshows, but his point is well taken. This is a strata of society that Hollywood ignores, except for the occasional cameo role in films like "Deliverance." It's a vision of a reality that we recognize instantly from our day-to-day experience, but which is carefully filtered out of the mass media.
Whether Korine has talent or promise in any convential sense of the words remains to be seen, but he's created a unique film that is destined to become a cult classic.
But, as an earlier reviewer noted, this is not a suitable date night substitute for "Casablanca" or "The Sound of Music."

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There's something about Gummo..., June 14, 2006

By 

Grigory's Girl "Grigory's Girl" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gummo (DVD)

If you describe this film to people, and tell them you like it, they'll think you're insane and disturbed. It's a documentary/collage like film about white trash. Some advertisements for the film have tried to portray it as a comedy, but it isn't. It's mostly vignettes from the town of Xenia, Ohio, where white trash and their values reign supreme. Cat killers (no cats were actually harmed), paying for sex with mentally handicapped people, white trash beating up chairs, and paint huffing are some of the attractions you'll see here. But Korine edits and films it in, dare I say, an artistic and interesting way. There is something going on here. This was an independent movie, but most indie movies are just quirky films that aren't that different than what mainstream Hollywood gives us. This is a real independent film. Korine films in 8mm, video, 16mm, and 35mm. He doesn't seem interested in crossover appeal with his work. He captures the despair and nihilism of these white trash denziens. And some of the images stick in your mind, like the kid taking a bath at the end eating spaghetti in a filthy tub. Korine has made only 2 features, but they are both certainly worth watching, and quite beautiful, in their own, strange way. This is a very good film....

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Feelings, October 29, 2008

By 

E. Levine "the reel girl" (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gummo (DVD)

Honestly, I don't know how to feel about this film. The formal structure of the film is brilliant. Korine uses a collage style that mixes film, digital video, home movies, and photos. He employs not a conventional linear narrational structure, but a more associational, non-linear logic that resembles poetry rather film. This idea of form has great potential, but I don't know that Korine fulfills that potential. Gummo is so reference-heavy (much like the poetry of T.S. Eliot) that it's almost impossible to understand all of the connections Korine makes and to understand the metaphors. Many of the images he uses (like Bunny Boy) have the potential to be symbolic, but in an interview on the special features of the DVD, Korine explains that like Bunny Boy and the title, Gummo, a lot of the images and references were things that he chose just because he liked them and wanted to see them in a movie. To attribute symbolic meaning to these things may be beneficial for the viewer as a personal exercise, and if an audience is affected by the associations they make on their own, that's great. However, I think that giving the credit to Korine just because he chose images he simply likes may be unwarranted.

I also think that Korine also uses a lot of shocking material for the sake of shock. Gummo is set in Xenia, Ohio (though actually shot near Nashville) and focuses on the poverty-stricken society that strives to exist in the aftermath of a tornado (although attributing the state of the town on the tornado seems like a red herring). So much of what the film depicts is pretty disturbing. We see kids who kill cats and huff glue, a man who prostitutes his sister with downs syndrome, and a girl who describes the sexual abuse she receives regularly at home, just to cite a few scenes. Most of the characters are violent, racist, and ignorant, and many of the actors are actually members of the surrounding community who are playing themselves. As a result, I sometimes feel like Korine is exploiting them as freaks. This especially concerns me in the scenes involving Ellen, the mentally disabled woman who is shown shaving her eyebrows off. I'm worried that Korine is somehow trying to benefit from the spectacle of this image, and the shock value it has, which I find cheap. I think Korine does a lot to shock his viewers and not much in the way of making us sympathize with his characters, especially those who are violent and racist.

Fans of the movie often defend Korine's intentions by arguing that he is attempting to show that although these people seem like lowlifes and freaks, they are still beautiful and interesting in their own right. I do agree that they are beautiful and interesting, but I don't think that Korine is responsible for giving us that. He is so busy showing us the gutter of humanity that when he does attempt to show us the beauty, it's buried under the hatred, violence, and abuse the characters subject each other to. Korine doesn't show us beauty overpowering the grotesque, though perhaps he attempts to. What we end up with is beauty buried under the grotesque. For that reason, I don't think the actual thematic content of the film lives up to the potential given by the form Korine has created. Each time I see Gummo, I walk away feeling pretty indifferent about the characters, like I haven't learned anything I didn't know before. I don't think anyone can presume to know what Korine "meant" by the film or if there was any greater intention at all. If there was, I think Korine's attempts to express it were ineffective.