Critics reviews

At their most absurd peaks, Mister Lonely and Trash Humpers are a testament of the healing powers of surrealism, a reminder of the need to fashion alternative paths to those laid out for us.

“Mister Lonely” is an odd, desperate film, lost in its own audacity, and yet there are passages of surreal beauty and preposterous invention that I have to admire.

“Mister Lonely” is enigmatic, its moods and meanings sometimes elusive in the way that dreams can be, but nearly every frame is an image of arresting clarity and beauty. And even when it strays beyond the border of sense, you can’t help accepting its logic and its truth, much as you do when your unconscious spools pictures in your sleep.

The pleasure of Korine’s films is in their free-form narrative style, but once we’re on the island, Mister Lonely gets stuck and begins to feel repetitive. While the film falls short in comparison to his other films, Korine remains one of the most innovative and surprising new voices in American cinema.

Mister Lonely is deeply original, strange and yet accessible.

Korine’s most lavishly produced pic to date begins as a sweet-tempered tale of social misfits-turned-celebrity impersonators, but falls short of its ambition to say something meaningful about the obsessive nature of celebrity culture.

Charm can only take you so far, and by the halfway point it becomes obvious that [Mister Lonely] has little else to offer. The mixture of the eccentric and the grotesque grows increasingly tiresome... [It's] a film that is as aesthetically appealing as it is dramatically wayward.