The Color Wheel (2012)

50% of critics liked it
(8 reviews)
44% of users liked it
(65 ratings)

The Color Wheel is the story of JR, an increasingly transient aspiring news-anchor, as she forces her disappointing younger brother Colin to embark on a road trip to move her belongings out of her professor-turned-lover's apartment. Problem is, these grown up kids do not get along, and are both too… More The Color Wheel is the story of JR, an increasingly transient aspiring news-anchor, as she forces her disappointing younger brother Colin to embark on a road trip to move her belongings out of her professor-turned-lover's apartment. Problem is, these grown up kids do not get along, and are both too obnoxious to know better. Chaos and calamity are not far behind her beat up Honda Accord. Too bad that nobody else in the world can stand either of them. Not Colin's neglectful girlfriend, nor JR's former high school friends, nor strangers they clash with at pretty much every step of their hopeless and increasingly infuriating voyage of frustration, failure and jerks. It can only be a matter of time before JR and Colin arrive at the strangest and most unsettling of resolutions and put to rest their decades of animosity, half-baked sibling rivalry and endless bickering. -- (C) Official Site

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 23 min.
Directed By: Alex Ross Perry
Written By: Alex Ross Perry, Carlen Altman
Genres: Drama, Comedy

In Theaters: May 18, 2012 Limited
Studio: Independent Pictures

Critic Reviews

A.O. Scott, New York Times
Sly, daring, genuinely original and at times perversely brilliant.
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe
Perry should be commended and encouraged. You now just want to see where else he can take that fidgety iconoclasm.
Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice
Like Howard Hawks's Twentieth Century, it's a travelogue movie about a couple whose impossible, porcupine personalities leave them safe, finally, for nobody's company but each other's.
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.
David Fear, Time Out New York
Some will call The Color Wheel daring. Others will remember that it takes more than desperate shocks to add substance to the sloppy diddlings of a dilettante.
Joseph Jon Lanthier, Slant Magazine
Much like the work of generational cohort Michael Robinson, Alex Ross Perry's films are steeped in a viscous cultural past.
Peter Keough, Boston Phoenix
I liked this film better when it was The Puffy Chair.