Critic Reviews

• Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times

  "The Color Wheel" partially recalls the scathing audacity of "The Graduate" some 45 years ago.

• Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

  You might not "like" Perry's movie, but it's hard to deny the forensically assured sensibility at work.

• Ronnie Scheib, Variety

  Hard to swallow but impossible to ignore.

• David Edelstein, New York Magazine

  The most entertaining unpleasant film I've seen in years.

• Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter

  A deceptively shambling, post-mumblecore road trip through dark comic territory.

• Richard Brody, New Yorker

  Perry directs these uproarious rapid-fire flareups with exquisite comic timing and incisive comic framing.

• A.A. Dowd, Time Out Chicago

  Alex Ross Perry's The Color Wheel begins as a scrappy, antagonistically funny road comedy and ends as something altogether stranger.

• Christopher Gray, Boston Phoenix

  The Color Wheel requires a brand of empathy mainstream audiences are unaccustomed to, but rewards it with nearly revolutionary insight.

• Simon Miraudo, Quickflix

  It's so rare to see something this scathing and sweet and strange that I have to recommend it enthusiastically.

• Michael Dequina, TheMovieReport.com

  The film's out-of-nowhere shock value conclusion suggests that Perry and Altman were really at a loss as to how to tie everything up.

• Phil Coldiron, L.A. Weekly

  Perry and co-writer/star Carlen Altman are Colin and J.R., the most loathsomely lovable brother-sister duo in the history of cinema.

• Dan Sullivan, Film Comment Magazine

  The result is a thorough examination of a generation-specific collective anxiety about doing anything, and of whether it's possible (or even worthwhile) to try to redeem oneself in a world gone ornery.

• Shawn Levy, Oregonian

  There's handmade and then there's amateurish. This, alas, is the latter.

• Sara Maria Vizcarrondo, Boxoffice Magazine

  The playacting and oddly veiled contempt evoke Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (if rewritten as a comedy about immaturity and starring tweens) while the quick-and-sharp sibling dynamics are like the Duplass Brothers on lemon juice.

Read all 14 critic reviews