Nothing is too crazed, corny, or freakishly florid for Tears of the Black Tiger. The debut of writer-director Wisit Sasanatieng is a delightfully unabashed affair, conceived in such good, giddy spirits it might have been called "Blissfully Yours."
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What are critics saying?
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The intoxicating madness of Tears of the Black Tiger is in the end too willed, too deliberate, to be entirely divine.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
A jaw-dropper: a delirium-inducing crash course in international trash.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Director Wisit Sasanatieng uses every trick imaginable to create surreal postmodern nostalgia. Has he wound up with pure camp, or a cult classic? As he clearly understands, the best B-movies are both.
Fun, if finally too silly.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
A delirious fever dream of pulp-western conventions by way of 1950s Hollywood melodrama, Thai filmmaker Wisit Sasanatieng surreal oddity unfolds in heavily manipulated colors so rich they seem ready to leap off the screen, punctuated by spasms of over-ripe dialogue, floridly dramatic songs and maniacal villainous laughter.
The movie is never going to have broad appeal. Though Sasanatieng makes a few swings at real poignancy--which don't really connect--mostly this is the kind of relentlessly postmodern "fun" best served in small portions, and preferably on dessert plates.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
A few more films like Tears of the Black Tiger, and kitsch will be on its way to having a bad name.
This is a scrapbook, a happy jumble, of many of the things we instinctively respond to in movies: color, shape, sound and movement, all intensified by heightened emotion.
What do you get when you mix a Douglas Sirk melodrama with a Sergio Leone Western? Tears of the Black Tiger, a high-camp Western from, of all places, Thailand.