The Playlist by Jessica Kiang

Ham on Rye is not obviously political, but it is also deeply political, pointing out, in lazy, absurdist, carelessly clever frames a​ deep-set​ American wrongness that was quietly murmuring away long before the current blowhard moment, and that will continue long after.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

The film’s purposeful archness challenges the sentimentality that marks many a film and real-life ceremony.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The film never behaves as if it is anything other than a realist coming-of-age drama but there is something else going on.

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

Taormina purposefully dresses his cast and designs their environment in a way that throws them into a sort of temporal never-never land. He achieves a number of other startling effects in this impressive movie, which sheds its naturalism slowly as it embraces a surrealism that’s both disquieting and poignant.

IndieWire by Ryan Lattanzio

While the narrative hardly goes into the fully unhinged direction it teases, it’s pleasantly askew and always marching to its own strange and, slightly off, beat.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

Ham on Rye will frustrate literal-minded audiences, but it’s a work of gentle, genuine American surrealism — a lo-fi love song to those left behind by character and chance.

The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore

Quiet and carefully made but cryptic, it relies on the viewer to complete its metaphors.