Critic Reviews
70
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
11(73%)
mixed
3(20%)
negative
1(7%)
Showing 15 Critic Reviews
100
A truly original American movie, a film like no other, a period of time spent in the company of the kinds of characters Saroyan and O'Neill would have understood, the kinds of people we try not to see, and yet might enjoy more than some of our more visible friends.
90
This seedy Barfly is beautifully written, acted and directed. It may be full of dank desire, wasted love and jesting misery--but it blooms. Whatever its flaws, it does something more films should do: It opens up territory, opens up a human being.
88
Barfly is a perfectly incorrigible comedy, a movie of unusual shape and unpredictable moves. [25 Nov 1987, p.D9]
83
Barfly has few peers when it comes to pitch-black comedies of ill manners.
80
Not a film for everyone, but the unrelieved squalor of Barfly offers its own peculiar fascinations.
80
Though it's set within the world of the seriously down-and-out in Los Angeles and is about people who are at the end of their ropes, Barfly somehow manages to be gallant and even cheerful. It has an admirably lean, unsentimental screenplay by Charles Bukowski, the poet laureate of America's misbegotten.
80
First American fictional feature from Swiss-French director Barbet Schroeder is spiked with unexpected doses of humor, much of it due to Mickey Rourke' quirky, unpredictable, most engaging performance as the boozy hero.
75
A highly watchable slice-of-low-life entertainment. If this isn't her best role, it's Dunaway's gutsiest.
75
To have a great time with Barfly's funny funkiness, you don't have to share Bukowski's soused attitude toward alcoholism, however; Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, whose wonderful performances transcend Bukowski's conceit, certainly don't. [13 Nov 1987]
70
After one scummy role after another, Rourke finally stops taking himself so seriously. Instead of the usual Neanderthal, he treats us to a sensitive, likable blob with a sense of humor.
