Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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88 of 99 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like nothing you've ever seen on TV, May 27, 2003
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."
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33 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
There's something about Gummo..., June 14, 2006
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....
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strange, sick, mesmerizing, surreal, December 2, 2002
I have just seen this movie, and I must say it is ambivalent. Very sick passages and ideas (wacko-kids from rural areas living out bizarre passions and experiencing strange situations), but the film has indeed very funny moments as well (e.g. the chair-squashing). There is no plot, nor is a plot intended. The surreal camera work, the "main" story being interrupted by rural persons talking about themselves (which is largely silly), the soundtrack containing grotesque songs at times (Death Metal, sick children choirs etc.) - all this reminds me a bit of Jim Jarmusch's "Permanent Vacation" (1982), an equally surreal film (if you liked Gummo, you should watch this!). The point I want to make here is: this is actually a MOVIE. Other reviewers have complained about a wrong picture concerning beautiful Ohio and about the film having no impact on them (funny then, why do they write reviews?). A cynical and surreal movie as Gummo is not a report - it is a point of view (or have you ever seen Terminators walking around in New York City?). This point of view may not be pleasing, nor elevating, nor relaxing - it forces one to think (even by being disgusting at times). And everything that makes one think, every such thorn in the flesh - is true art.
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