Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

Covers this exact same territory, but does it with such refreshing, clearheaded honesty and skill it seems like a revelation.

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

Exudes that seriousness about life and openness about style. It's about nothing and yet everything.

The New York Times by Dana Stevens

What distinguishes The Low Down from movies like "The Brothers McMullen" and "My Life's in Turnaround" is its ragged edge of authenticity, its refusal to plot its characters' lives on the graph of romantic comedy convention.

Washington Post by Stephen Hunter

A well-acted first effort written and directed by Jamie Thraves.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Gets better the more attention you pay. To say "nothing happens" is to be blind to everyday life, during which we wage titanic struggles with our programming.

Chicago Tribune by Loren King

Lightweight but likable and blessedly free of the posing and pretensions that mark the Hollywood crop of twentysomething coming-of-age films.

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

With its artfully artless hand-held cinematography, haphazard focus, non-diegetic dialogue and what sounds like a largely improvised script, Thraves's film is all about style, but contains a surprising amount of substance.

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

This kind of filmmaking is riddled with so-called errors, but these mistakes are indistinguishable from the uncommon rewards.

Film.com by Tom Keogh

Lots of movies deal with friends and lovers of a certain age growing apart. But few can hear, as Thraves does, the sound of death chains rattling in the background.

L.A. Weekly by Paul Malcolm

Thraves escapes formula by shaping the film around low-key incidents instead of speeches or overt lessons. There are plenty of side streets here.

Boston Globe by Jay Carr

Captures the ensemble quality it was after and the provisional look and feel are perfect stylistic analogues to the lives - the male lives, anyway - that it's portraying.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Desmond Ryan

Defiantly different, a movie that carefully checks the pulse of its characters rather than trying to get the blood rushing.

New York Daily News by Jami Bernard

Here’s a British spin on the familiar struggle of the couch potato who plans any minute now to get off his duff.

Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas

Thraves is skillful at evoking mood and atmosphere and at depicting transitional periods in a person's life with a mildly wistful humor.

New Times (L.A.) by David Ehrenstein

May be too low-key for its own good. Still, if you want to get in on the ground floor of Aidan Gillen's certain-to-be-skyrocketing career, it's a good place to start.

New York Post by Jonathan Foreman

The whole thing is shot in an irritating, self-conscious way.