Humboldt County.

"From its simple title font evocative of another era to its opening and closing shots reminiscent of The Graduate to its casting of filmmaking icon Peter Bogdanovich, Humboldt County acknowledges its immodest aims early on," writes Kristi Mitsuda at indieWIRE. "Taking as their subject matter a happy, hippie hideaway in the marijuana-rich forests of Northern California, writing and directing team Danny Jacobs and Darren Grodsky seem to believe that representation of the unconventional marks their debut effort as such, but the film fails to break any new aesthetic or narrative ground."

"If Being There's Chance the Gardener were younger, smarter, and a medical student, he might look and act something like Peter Hadley (Jeremy Strong), the character at the center of Humboldt County," writes Hailey Eber for Radar. "Time and motivation get a bit hazy, but what can you expect in the marijuana capitol of North America?"

Updated through 10/3.

"A tale rooted in the generational clash between the late-60s hippie counterculture and the buttoned-down present, Peter's budding friendship with Jack (Brad Dourif), his wife Rosie (Frances Conroy) and their son Max (Chris Messina) nominally concerns the war on drugs but largely generates tension through Peter and Max's issues with their overbearing/negligent daddies," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "Unfortunately, this friction is of a schematic sort that all too often seems mainly intent on recalling spiritual predecessors Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces."

"Jeremy Strong's minimalist performance in the lead role makes for an unconvincing character arc - he seems almost as ill-at-ease and dispirited by the end of the film as he does at the beginning - and as a stand-in for the audience, he's pretty much a cipher," writes Jean Oppenheimer in the Voice

Update, 10/3: "If Humboldt County had been made in the era of Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, it would have romanticized these characters as the righteously free-spirited vanguard of an emerging utopia," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Instead it portrays them as likable stragglers from an earlier era fighting off the lurking anxiety that their lives might be empty and useless."

Posted by dwhudson at October 2, 2008 2:38 PM