The Pleasure of Being Robbed.

"Essentially a mumblecore version of Pickpocket - sans the moral and existential high stakes, and with dollops of Miranda July-style fancy thrown in - Joshua Safdie's The Pleasure of Being Robbed operates under the curious assumption that we should all be so lucky as to come into contact with its seemingly fearless protagonist." Ed Gonzalez in the Voice.

A "lack of familiarity with the Safdie brothers' work may be beneficial to The Pleasure of Being Robbed," suggests Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook, "as the film's pleasing simplicity and its easy, gag-based niceness might wear off after seeing several shorter pieces in the same vein."

Updated through 10/6.

"If The Pleasure of Being Robbed is the future of American independent film, than perhaps consideration should be given to blowing the whole thing up." Nick Schager in Slant. "Not a single lovely image appears to enliven this dithering tale, a serious problem considering the wealth of scenes that are punctuated by only traces of barely functional dialogue."

"[T]hough it features wonderfully un-self-conscious actors cheerfully ambling through comic vignettes, it's not (entirely) just another kids-in-Brooklyn-apartments movie," writes Henry Stewart in the L Magazine. "Quarter-life-crisisers don't dissect their romantic relationships ad nauseum here. Instead, they steal.... Safdie's film observes the freedom from consequences afforded to New York's free, white and 21 population."

Eric Kohn profiles Safdie for indieWIRE.

Updates, 10/3: In the New York Times, Laura Kern finds Pleasure to be "a technically deficient bore with little on its agenda."

"[D]espite the Beantown tangent and some peripheral scenes at a Ping-Pong club in Chinatown, we're a long way from the Bujalski-Swanberg world of lazy, hazy hipsters," writes David Fear in Time Out New York. "While Safdie clearly shows his influences, notably Pickpocket and Shadows, his way of warping this Gotham neorealistic tale into something truly offbeat suggests a singular sensibility. The chance to discover a raw talent like this (who'll convince you that every movie deserves a dream sequence featuring a polar bear) is a pleasure indeed."

Elisabeth Donnelly meets the Red Bucket crew for Tribeca.

Online viewing tip. Filmmaker hosts a promo, A Pleasure in Red.

Update, 10/4: "I'm already on record as loving this invigorating little movie, with its French New Wave-style blend of brashness, tenderness and pain. In fact, I think it's something special, with all its flaws and uncertainties and internal contradictions." Andrew O'Hehir introduces his interview with the Red Bucketeers at Salon.

Update, 10/6: At the SpoutBlog, Brandon Harris talks with Eleonore Hendricks about her "Media Diet."

Posted by dwhudson at October 2, 2008 3:26 PM