It’s a pretty grim portrait, but even worse it is often repetitive and boring. There are probably enough powerful segments for half a dozen or so outstanding rock videos but not a full-length feature. [13 Sept 1982]
We hate to say it, but we can't find anywhere to view this film.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Washington Post by Gary Arnold
Parker's fatal misjudgment is failing to recognize that a solemnly expressionistic movie presentation of themes from "The Wall" tends to magnify its inherent lack of dramatic substance.
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
His The Wall is a good-looking film, and it has no shortage of nerve. When he puts an entire schoolchildren's choir on a conveyor belt leading into a meat grinder as they sing, ''We don't need no education,'' he is being nothing if not bold. These effects, while some are individually powerful, are dwarfed by the towering selfimportance of The Wall and by its lack of focus.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Those tensions and conflicts produced, I believe, the right film for this material. I don't require that its makers had a good time. I'm reminded of my favorite statement by Francois Truffaut: "I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between."