Just perfect...

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Harmony Korine is one of the most provocative filmmakers who ever shot a frame. There (As far as I can tell) isn't a single taboo that's off the table with him, from underage sex, to incest, animal cruelty and twisted family values. In 1995, Larry Clark's controversial teen sex epic Kids, written by Korine, was released to wide acclaim and even wider controversy. Impressed by the acclaim his screenplay received, Fine Line Pictures (The "Indy" arm of New Line Cinema) gave Korine $1,000,000.00 and carte blanche to make any film he wanted as his directorial debut. After about six months of principal photography, this is what the result was.......Gummo plays like the bastard lovechild of David Lynch and John Waters with the nastiness cranked up to eleven. It maintains a stream-of-consciousness state without ever getting caught up in anything that can be considered a plot. Instead, we weave in and out of several people's lives in the crumbling town of Xenia, Ohio. In a truly unsettling opening voice-over, Solomon (Jacob Reynolds), one of the leads (If you can call him that) describes a disastrous tornado that hit their town in the seventies. He describes the destruction in ways that are absolutely devoid of empathy, with lines like: "My neighbor was killed in that house. He used to ride bikes and three-wheelers. They never found his head. I always thought that was funny." It appears that Xenia never bounced back from that, leaving it's residents to while their lives away doing drugs, drinking, and other much more (And I mean much MUCH more) nefarious acts. The film has no real plot, which mirrors the lives of it's characters, who simply go about their daily, filthy lives with no real concept of the future. The town becomes almost a human dumping ground, devoid of any authority of any kind.Gummo is a brilliant, once in a lifetime kind of movie. If the above description doesn't grab you, that's not even the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's on display here. The aforementioned stream-of-consciousness format perfectly puts you in this world. It gains a documentary feel as we have a series of vingettes that sometimes come off as out-and-out interviews. These scenes are especially unnerving when you find out that a great many of these people are not real actors, and they're not reading a script. Gummo is both hyper-realistic and surrealistic. There are a great many sequences in the film that are all too real-looking (The aforementioned interview vingettes, tales of incestuous sexual abuse, glue sniffing) and there are moments that are so absurd, you can't believe your eyes (Namely, a young boy, simply referred to as "Bunny Boy" on account of the fact that he tr traipses around this collection of human wreckage with nothing more than a pair of shorts, tennis shoes and a big pair of pink rabbit ears. I'm not making this up) The aforementioned Bunny Boy acts almost like the audience, seeing all this dysfunction with a look of detachment on his face.The cinematography of Gummo is one of the liveliest aspects of the film. Employing grainy 16 and 8mm, video, and pristine-looking 35mm, it juts back and forth between styles so quickly that you never have a moment to catch your breath. And why should you? Harmony Korine has so much to show you. It never stays one way for too long, keeping everything moving at a good clip.Let it be known, there is no hope in this film. While the movie never fully condones the actions of it's (Often) despicable characters, it never truly demonizes them either. These are lost souls, left to their own devices in a place where there are no repercussions for their actions (In one scene, the character of Tummler (Nick Sutton) is seen talking on a payphone, holding a dead cat by a rope around it's neck, with people and cars passing by, no one paying any attention to what he's doing) There is also never a sign of any police. law and Order are a myth in this place. As they go about their scummy lives, we see no future for them. Just as well, since they don't either. Therein lies the tragedy of the film.I've left out some of the more memorable (That's putting it lightly) moments, as they've been mentioned before. However, if this, by some divine miracle, happens to be the only review you read before seeing the film, I hope you are just as shocked as I was. You'll thank me later.

I have seen some strange things, but Gummo really takes the cake. This is a film that has no plot, simply following the lives of redneck children, as they kill cats to sell to the butcher, use duct tape to make their nipples bigger, and play the accordion while on the toilet. Somehow this film has gained a cult following and there are some people out there who will tell you they love this film. I can see how some of the scenes could be funny, but as a film, Gummo is nothing but one big stereotype, that doesn't follow any kind of storyline at all. Even more bizarre than the film, is the cast of kids, who seemingly came from nowhere. Jacob Sewell plays the bunny boy and literally walks around the entire time with nothing on but a pair of shorts and a pair of pink bunny ears, hardly saying a word. The other main actor is Nick Sutton, who has got to be the strangest looking person I've ever seen. He at least has some lines, but I really could have done without seeing the 13 year old actor getting a bath from his mother, while scarfing down food in the bathtub. Honestly, I don't know how a studio even agrees to make something like this. To me, Gummo has no artistic value whatsoever, and I suspect one would have to be on drugs to fully comprehend everything that is going on. Some weirdness comes off well for it's artistic value, but even those films have some kind of a plot that you can follow, Gummo has none of that and really offers very little that anyone can follow or even relate to.

In my opinion it is an important movie. It's an aberrant creation, but I love it. The director try to show everything for you how can be gruesome the life. The actors is incredible and the direct too. I wonder what Korine was thinking while direct this movie. He sure can an interesting guy. I meet with he with pleasure.Other his creatures are awesome too - all movie are an interesting experience. I think people can understand to essence so much, however it is very important in my opinion.It's an masterpiece for everyone. You must not be an artist that you feel it.This is an underground recorded for some people who can understand what say it. Must everyone see it!

I won't beat around the bush. I HATED this film. Friends were raving about how great it was and I eagerly sat down to watch it with them as they watched it for a second/third time. It was the equivalent to spending the afternoon stuck in a Ketamine induced state whilst trapped in supported living asylum in a hopeless, post apocalyptic, nihilistic society where everyone has completely given up. It's repulsive throughout and aims to be provocative but in a really pretentious, attention seeking without offering resolution sort of a way. It felt exploitative by nature, in imagining that these people or communities exist and the way that we would view or judge them as a different, lesser species. I felt nothing for the characters, so poorly developed that I couldn't even feel pity for them. I both squirmed and yawned my way through it. Films are meant to make you think or feel or open your mind or heart or at the very least entertain purely on the superficial basis of humour or beauty. It wasn't arty, it wasn't meaningful, it didn't offer anything new or leave me with any important questions or feelings other than wtf have I just watched and why is anyone digging this?! The hype surrounding it reminds me very much of the story of The emperor's new clothes. To heck with anyone who has been duped by this utter garbage, trying to tell you that you don't 'get' it. There is nothing to get. It is vacuous and degrading and reeks of an over stretched student film. Perhaps the pointlessness and boredom of watching the film was meant to leave you with some empathy for the boredom and pointlessness of the characters lives? Another reviewer nailed it with the title 'Hipster poverty voyeurism'. I think that sums it up perfectly. I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because it obviously left an impression on me although I am not sure why other than how dirty it made me feel for watching it.