Critics reviews

It’s an abrasive, thrilling, funny, sexy, and compelling film... Totally F***ed Up stands as an early example of his [Araki's] ability to seamlessly bring together an era’s top issues, the camaraderie and prickliness of youth, and low-budget style to create a singular cinematic experience. Totally Fed Up may call itself “another homo movie,” but there were few like it before it, and even fewer like it since.

Indeed, for all its rather obvious attitude, the film's conventional at heart: a soap for the slack generation, that'll strike a chord way outside the confines of the New Queer Cinema.

[M]uch of Totally F***ed Up’s tone is spiky in its compassion and humor, due in no small amount to Behshid and Gill’s funny lesbian duo. The total lack of pity and condescension carries the film over its rough spots and aimless patches.

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a lighthearted picture and even when the movie emerges from behind its grainy black-and-white video world, the mood does not lighten. There's no escaping the teen angst or, for that matter, Araki's thumping message with the angry director managing to slip the odd political curve-ball into proceedings as if he's been watching too many Oliver Stone movies.

Indeed, the film is tautly, faultlessly structured, and Araki manages to create a spontaneous, off-the-cuff quality while maintaining tight control.

Araki's self-described “guerrilla” style of filmmaking has just the right edge here, yet is polished enough not to distract. In this respect, Totally F***ed Up is a much better film than Araki's last effort, The Living End. Although the teenaged ennui in the film sometimes comes off as hip nihilism, there's no question that the pain and turmoil depicted is anything but heartfelt.

Like Araki’s previous work, pic undeniably conveys a strong sense of a certain attitude toward life. But arbitrary structure and lack of interesting characters prove off-putting... Ultimately, the desperation here seems like an artistic pose compared to the genuine anarchic nihilism born of utter hopelessness in “The Living End.”