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Gentlemen Broncos
EMAILPRINTFox Searchlight Pictures
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 21 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 7 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy
Written by:
Jared Hess
Jerusha Hess
Directed by: Jared Hess
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 30, 2009
Running Time: 89 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for some crude humor
Starring Michael Angarano, Jennifer Coolidge, Jemaine Clement, Mike White, and Sam Rockwell
Benjamin, home-schooled by his eccentric mother, is a lovable loner whose passion for writing leads him on an offbeat and hilarious journey as his story first gets ripped off by the legendary fantasy novelist, Ronald Chevalier and then is adapted into a disastrous movie by the small town’s most prolific homespun filmmaker. (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Teeming with socially awkward misfits, Gentlemen Broncos is not without its absurdist charms, although Hess (who co-scripted with his wife, Jerusha) pushes the envelope in ways it doesn't need pushing.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
The best part is Jemaine Clement as Benjamin’s grandiose genre hero, Dr. Ronald Chevalier. Even if you love him on "Flight of the Conchords," you’ll be unprepared for his genius--and charisma.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
As the struggle toward something new and different overwhelms the film, it becomes less and less human, less and less funny and less and less worth the effort to meet it on its own terms.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The director, Jared Hess, who made "Napoleon Dynamite," a film I admit I didn't get, has made a film I don't even begin to get.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York David Fear
It’s unfair to blame Hess solely for condescension comedy’s bad aftertaste--he’s not the only perpetrator--but his particular brand is the most graceless.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck
Has little to offer besides unrelenting strangeness.
Read Full Review >Variety Peter Debruge
Napoleon Dynamite seems perfectly well-adjusted (not to mention downright charismatic) compared to homeschooled mama's boy Benjamin Purvis in Gentlemen Broncos, the latest oddball character portrait from one-trick helmer Jared Hess.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
If you didn't know otherwise, you'd swear that Gentlemen Broncos was made by a disaffected high school student – and not a particularly talented one.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
A comedy that can’t even admit to its own overwhelming sense of disgust.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Sean O'Neal
Crammed with so much deliberate tackiness that it borders on exhausting self-parody.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Timing, good jokes and characters you can laugh with and at are mostly missing from Gentlemen Broncos.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Gary Goldstein
Satire aside, what the oddball folks here never feel is real, despite the filmmakers' claims of autobiographical parallels.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Scott Foundas
Hess deserves credit, I suppose, for so effectively channeling his inner seven-year-old. Personally, I preferred spending two hours in the company of Spike Jonze's.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Setting out to make a cult movie is almost as strange as setting out to make a camp movie. Or setting out to make a movie that's so bad it's good. If you know you're doing it, you're not really doing it.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
There's a lesson behind Gentlemen Broncos , the new film from director Jared Hess: Don't try to mock above your talent level.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Yep, Hess wrote and directed "Dynamite," and here's proof we shouldn't have rewarded him. The hollow "Broncos" is even more cruelly disdainful, designed primarily to scorn the pathetic lives within.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The audience may have bought the act in "Napoleon Dynamite." But this time, the act bombs.
Read Full Review >Washington Post John Anderson
What Michael Bay did for the Hollywood blockbuster with his second "Transformers" movie, Jared Hess has now done for the low-budget indie with Gentlemen Broncos -- namely, stain an entire genre with a sense of soulless calculation.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
White is cast in this film as a “guardian angel” and adds another level of painful homosexual confusion and stereotyping to the film. Ultimately, all the chafing caused by Gentlemen Broncos is likely to leave you saddlesore.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 9.4 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
alison d gave it a10:
Hilarious, zanny, smart and tender. We couldn't stop laughing the whole time and went back again and it was even funnier.
Jackson J gave it a9:
Hess films make many squirm, as I do occasionally, but I see very redeeming virtues in their uncomfortable depictions of sad life in the rural mountain west. For most filmmakers and movie goers, Hollywood and the Cinema is a larger than life fantasy world. Women like Catherine Zeta-Jones play female leads, Men like George Clooney play male leads, and everything is more glamorous, exciting, and entertaining than real-life. In essence, film becomes an escape from the drab mundane to another more exciting reality. Even films that are supposed to be dramatic, gritty, or depressing are played up with an engaging score, winsome actors, or beautiful scenery. This departure from reality is ferociously combated by the Hess'. Their films appear to be set in black holes that have drawn in kitsch from even the remotest corners of the universe and their characters are costumed with the saddest finds a thrift store could possibly offer, but there is purpose in the uncomfortable ugliness of it all; and if you’d seen my late grandmother’s motor home, you’d be forced to acknowledge their authenticity. The Hess’ seem to embrace these sad surroundings and glory in the disappointments and eccentricities of real people and real circumstances. It may not look pretty, but it feels real. There is sweet triumph in Gentlemen Broncos, triumph magnified sevenfold by the depressing realities surrounding it. The movie sends a message of hope for even the most down and out kid, and it’s a message that doesn’t have the synthetic and packaged feel that makes most of Hollywood’s drivel completely meaningless.
Rob D gave it a10:
This is right up hess' alley. He does a great job with great cast. It's not intended to be an intellectually stimulating movie and you shouldn't expect to get that from it. It's just plain fun entertaining humor.
Rusty gave it an8:
Funny. But you have to like this style of movie.
