SPOILER: Don't let anyone tell you you're close-minded if you hated this movie. This movie was, beyond an inkling of a flicker of a shadow of a doubt, egregiously awful. There are always going to be wannabe artsy types out there who claim to see things other people don't; they "get" movies like Gummo, or at least they pretend to, so they can act as if they're in on something the rest of the world just isn't smart enough to understand. The truth is, though, that there is absolutely nothing to get. This movie is not innovative, nor intriguing, nor even interesting in the least. There's no underlying meaning to it at all (writer/director Harmony Korine admitted as much in an interview). It's just a loosely continuous assembly of vignettes depicting random scenes of filth, squalor, and depravity.
The movie is not a social commentary, as some have argued. It offers no insight into the lives of the people it exploits. The entire backstory-the tornado-serves only as an excuse for the rest of the thing, as if it mattered. It goes like this: first, we get to watch a shirtless boy in a bunny hood spit and urinate off an overpass; next, we meet two teenagers who ride their bikes around the desolate and dilapidated town, looking for cats they can kill and sell to a local restaurant owner; then, we're introduced to three bleach-blonde sisters who don't seem to have any parents and who busy themselves with such activities as ripping electrical tape off their bare nipples. These are the only recurring characters to speak of. Nothing they do is even remotely interesting or entertaining, though. And every other character is memorable only for the few minutes it takes the viewer to rid himself of the feeling of disgust, only to be disgusted again and again by characters he should be feeling sympathy for.
And that's really why this movie is so awful. Don't get me wrong, it'd be awful no matter what, but it wouldn't be entirely without merit if we could actually feel anything other than disdain for the characters. But these are not real people, everything is actually scripted, and none of it is believable at all.
The shock value is negligible; it's not really shocking, but even if it were, there are better movies to watch if that's what you're after. It's not innovative, either-it's actually almost a blatant rip-off of some other, more noteworthy films. It's quite obvious that the only purpose here was to be pretentious. Of course, it probably wasn't meant to be so obvious.
The movie is not a social commentary, as some have argued. It offers no insight into the lives of the people it exploits. The entire backstory-the tornado-serves only as an excuse for the rest of the thing, as if it mattered. It goes like this: first, we get to watch a shirtless boy in a bunny hood spit and urinate off an overpass; next, we meet two teenagers who ride their bikes around the desolate and dilapidated town, looking for cats they can kill and sell to a local restaurant owner; then, we're introduced to three bleach-blonde sisters who don't seem to have any parents and who busy themselves with such activities as ripping electrical tape off their bare nipples. These are the only recurring characters to speak of. Nothing they do is even remotely interesting or entertaining, though. And every other character is memorable only for the few minutes it takes the viewer to rid himself of the feeling of disgust, only to be disgusted again and again by characters he should be feeling sympathy for.
And that's really why this movie is so awful. Don't get me wrong, it'd be awful no matter what, but it wouldn't be entirely without merit if we could actually feel anything other than disdain for the characters. But these are not real people, everything is actually scripted, and none of it is believable at all.
The shock value is negligible; it's not really shocking, but even if it were, there are better movies to watch if that's what you're after. It's not innovative, either-it's actually almost a blatant rip-off of some other, more noteworthy films. It's quite obvious that the only purpose here was to be pretentious. Of course, it probably wasn't meant to be so obvious.