80
Joyous, outrageous and slyly mournful.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
The Beach Bum is not a terrible movie. The directing is competent, the score is excellent, and the cast is game and hilarious. However, considering who was at the helm, it is not focused enough and winds up with nothing to say.
75
RogerEbert.com by Brian Tallerico
Korine’s visual gifts are on full display, capturing both the opulence of Florida and its scuzzy side in a way that finds beauty in both.
33
Consequence of Sound by Dan Caffrey
Moondog’s antics aren’t all that funny or captivating, even when divorced from their assholery.
67
The Beach Bum is a skillfully crafted and often hilariously entertaining, but like an evening with Moondog, it might leave you with a hangover.
60
The Hollywood Reporter by Jon Frosch
Bu I, admittedly, had a hard time getting on its woozy wavelength. But The Beach Bum is a work of undeniable commitment and craft — a gonzo picaresque, soaked with booze and filled with gyrating, jiggling flesh, that will play well to the not-negligible segment of the population where cannabis lovers and cinephiles overlap.
67
[McConaughey]’s so entertaining, in fact, that it takes nearly the entirety of “The Beach Bum” to fully absorb how little else there is to the film once the initial high of basking in Moondog’s perma-stoned glory wears off.
40
Simultaneously shaggy and hyper-stylized, The Beach Bum plays like a less-coked-out “Scarface,” the collected works of Charles Bukowski, and a Cheech & Chong movie all rolled up in one — an epic goof in which the cast (not just McConaughey but Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence, Jonah Hill, and Jimmy Buffett) play elaborate, semi-improvised caricatures of outlandish tropical fruits.
83
The hedonism on display is very much of a piece with “Trash Humpers” and “Spring Breakers,” but in a surprising change of pace for Korine, the film is more at ease with itself, and more emotional than either of those two provocative efforts.
50
Screen International by Tim Grierson
While one can’t argue with the Oscar-winner’s commitment, there’s far more mannerisms than inspiration — a criticism that also applies to this self-indulgent, infrequently transfixing stoner comedy.