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| Released: |
1995 |
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| Genre: |
DRAMA
RITES-OF-PASSAGE
CONTROVERSIAL
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
90 |
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ANTI Reviews
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| | | "Though the characters in Kids are present-day teenagers in Manhattan, the filmmaker (a celebrated still photographer) is middle-aged, as are the majority of those who have lauded the picture. I therefore suspect it's no accident that the kids are portrayed as stupid, crude, contemptible beasts. In effect, we're seeing a Boomers' revenge movie. "We've had our drugs and sex," is the message, "but don't you indulge. It's bad for you." And then these same Boomers congratulate themselves for their hipness in approving of Kids." | | (Stuart Klawans, Nation) | | | "These teenagers are troll dolls, eyes like glass, on the road to hell. How can you be doomed and boring at the same time? Kids has been touted as shockingly empathetic, but it feels more like the work of a grownup having problems with his inner child." | | (Tom Gliatto, People Weekly) | | | "Loathsome." | | (Washington Times) | | | "Does it work as a moral fable? Probably not... Its unsparing negativity will repel those who might find its message instructive. Concretely, since it lacks a rating, teen-age audiences who might profit from seeing the lonely world created by pervasive but empty sex cannot legally see the film, and rightly so. Parents, teachers and clergy will find the language irredeemably filthy. On the other hand, advocates of the post-moral behavior that masks itself as personal freedom will be able to dismiss Kids as a distorted caricature of urban life. Instead of feeling remorse upon seeing the results of their moral deconstruction, they will be able to point to the one-sided portrait presented in the film and maintain their witless belief that many healthy young people experiment with alcohol, drugs and recreational sex as a normal and inevitable stage in growing up in the real world. Larry Clark, they will conclude, is presenting cartoon, not reality." | | (Richard A. Blake, America) | | | "After this movie was over I didn't ask where were the kids' parents? I asked where were Larry Clark's parents?" | | (Libby Gelman-Waxner, Premiere) | | | "One good development over the year involved Kids , an exploitative movie about children at risk in a world of AIDS. Kids was released unrated through a subsidiary of the Disney corporation after the company's Miramax subsidiary failed to persuade the ratings board to reduce its well-deserved NC-17 rating to an R. Because Disney does not distribute either NC-17 or unrated films, it sent Kids into the market by way of a specially created company called Shining Excalibur. By the end of the year, Kids was a box office bust and Shining Excalibur was out of business." | | (James M. Wall, The Christian Century) | | | "The tone is so unremittingly sordid and the focus on his pubeescent hedonists so narrow that one can't help feeling that the film's "realism", for all its cleverly edited, grainy informality, leans towards exploitative sensationalism." | | (Geofff Andrew, Time Out) | | | | | |
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