Empire by Chris Hewitt (1)

The premise sounds like an off-Broadway play gone wrong. Far from it — this is extraordinary, vital, and fuelled by great performances.

Slate by Jeffrey Bloomer

Hilarious, deranged, and always alive with possibility.

Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman

If I understand the intentions of writer-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the film moved me profoundly. I’ll let you come up with your interpretation – or I’ll share mine privately, to avoid spoilers – but it’s a unique look inside a troubled mind.

The Seattle Times by Soren Andersen

Sometimes hilarious, ultimately poignant, Swiss Army Man is a picture like no other.

RogerEbert.com by Matt Zoller Seitz

The Daniels have made a film that's at once a labor of love and a work of sheer arrogant nerve, one that is as likely to be described as a classic, an ambitious misfire, and one of the worst films ever made by any three people who see it together. How many movies can you say that about?

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

This is pop art by way of lowbrow slapstick, with a premise that suggests "Cast Away" meets "Weekend at Bernie's," but really feels like a lunatic's idea of a big, broad studio comedy — or maybe a mad scientist's.

Total Film by Paul Bradshaw

Juvenile? Weird? Gross? Yes. But also the best flatulence-themed indie-comedy-musical-drama you’ll see this year.

The Telegraph by Tim Robey

Both actors, unfazed by the sheer oddity of their task, rise energetically to the occasion.

The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis

Impossible to categorize, this stunningly original mix of the macabre and the magical combines comedy, tragedy, fantasy and love story into an utterly singular package that’s beholden to no rules but its own.

Slant Magazine by Christopher Gray

Even as it invites snarky ridicule, the film dares you to buy into its singular earnestness.

Consequence by Justin Gerber

Frenzied, kinetic filmmaking is hit or miss, but The Daniels are showcasing their talents as opposed to showing off.

Variety by Peter Debruge

At times deliriously dynamic, at others patience-grating in the extreme, the constantly inventive film fires off ideas that are as exhilarating as anything American audiences will see all year, only to lag in long swells on either side.

The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin

It’s entirely to the directors and the two lead actors’ credit that what sounds like a bunch of overextended body humor gags of the most juvenile variety evolve, by sheer repetitious attrition, into something bizarrely poetic and strangely touching.

Screen Daily by Tim Grierson

Swiss Army Man is a powerfully audacious and wilfully odd odyssey that is too nervy and strangely emotional to dismiss outright but, ultimately, isn’t satisfying enough to provoke a full-throated defence, either.

The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman

It’s coarse and it’s stupid, but it is, thanks mostly the two good performances and some stylish use of music and editing, a little bit moving.

The Film Stage by Jordan Raup

Swiss Army Man is an exceptionally unusual, one-of-a-kind achievement, worthy to seek out for that factor alone. However, if as much time was spent on refining the script as was the world-building, this could have been a magical realism fever dream like few others.

The Playlist by Russ Fischer

Swiss Army Man is a big swing — there's no denying the risk in putting two well-known actors in a film where one plays a barely-mobile corpse — but also a big whiff that rarely connects its characters and situations to humor or empathy.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

A ridiculously infantile film, one that flatters itself by intimating a deeper comment about suppressed masculinity or romantic passivity.