Kari combines Kaurismaki's deadpan minimalism and Truffaut's sensitivity toward adolescent yearning with a hefty dose of gallows humor, and tops it all off with an apocalyptic ending.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
After a while the movie spins its wheels, unable to find much emotional traction in the icy bleakness.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Quirky, heartfelt acting makes this a superior entry in the perennial teenage-misfit genre.
An inspired mix of realism, humor and metaphor.
A lightly comic slacker drama that takes the desperation of teenage tedium seriously.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
The laconic Lemarquis does a solid job carrying off Kári's dryly mordant wit, making this eccentric story well worth watching.
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
A playfully quirky and, ultimately, unexpectedly affecting portrait of a 17-year-old slacker.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Paced a bit too glacially for my taste, yet it's worth sitting through for its trick ending, a twist of events as ominous as the landscape.
Performances are spot-on from the entire cast; each memorable character is finely detailed and full of eccentricities that are beautifully underplayed.
Kari successfully meshes comedy, ennui and tragedy, much in the manner of Jim Jarmusch and Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki.