What is unexpected, however, is that the film manages to be flat and uninteresting, despite the juicy (or, at the very least, lurid) true story from 1979 that serves as this curio's inspiration.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
If someone else had made "My Son," it would be just another crime thriller based on a true story. But with Werner Herzog behind the camera, it's a head-scratcher from start to finish.
Everything about this berserk, essentially static procedural is just crazy enough to be true. In any case, Herzog has gone beyond Good and Evil to reinvent himself as a candidate for the wiggiest director of comedy in America today.
It’s likely that only Herzog would dare to, and succeed at, resolving this singular cinematic object by contemplating the fate of an abandoned basketball.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
While watching Werner Herzog’s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done you might be tempted to murmur, “My Werner, My Werner, What Have Ye Done.”
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
By the end of this film/experiment/prank – which, to be blunt, is pretty unsatisfying – the viewer is left to ponder what it's all about, and what its purpose may have been, which, knowing Lynch and Herzog, might well be what it was about, and what its purpose was.
Viewers will have to decide for themselves whether My Son is a terrible, terrible movie or an uncompromising Herzog experiment in reality-bending. Here’s a suggestion: consider the track record.
As nutty as you'd expect when two of our most eccentric auteurs join forces.