Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
Tim Heidecker's Swanson does not amuse us in spite of the pity he inspires but because of it. Read full review
Picture "Raging Bull" with a sleazy prep from the Brooklyn hipsteropolis of Williamsburg, and you'll get the idea of The Comedy, a character study that tries to make the revolting compelling. Read full review
At some point, he finds himself drifting around a swimming pool, and it's tempting to think of Dustin Hoffman sinking to the bottom of the deep end in "The Graduate." But there's a difference. Swanson's pool is empty. Read full review
The anomie of entitlement pushed to poisonous extremes is the basis of this provocation, which is as frustrating as it is intriguing. Read full review
The Comedy pretends to be a satire of entitlement, but it's made in a style so indulgent that the whole film feels entitled in the extreme. Read full review
The movie may critique its antihero, but it also offers just one more venue in which he's allowed to wallow - while we pay his way. Read full review
The film retreads much of the anti-comedic territory already bulldozed in Heidecker and Wareheim's own "Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie," retaining the scatological flavor but none of the surrealism. Read full review
If it weren't for Kate Lyn Sheil, who has a couple of scenes as a blase Brooklyn waitress inexplicably ending up in the protagonist's bed, 'The Comedy' might well have qualified as the worst film of 2012. Read full review
Unlike a truly daring movie like Lars von Trier's "The Idiots" - about a gang of clever jerks who pretend to be mentally retarded - The Comedy never musters an articulate indictment, nor does it have much to say on the subject of free-floating fatigue. Read full review
The Comedy, one of the most self-indulgent, pretentious and unfunny movies of the year, is a mean-spirited piece of mumblecore that tries to provoke you, but only succeeds in boring you. Read full review
4.0
Dave White Profile
That guy. Read full review