Critic Reviews
75
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
8(89%)
mixed
1(11%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 9 Critic Reviews
100
In the end, Bill emerges as someone truly unique and someone who we feel privileged to know.
83
If the film has a significant flaw, it's that Venditti never explains in the film how she found Billy, or why she's interested in him. Billy The Kid often plays more like an extended home movie than something intentional and artful.
80
But what you ultimately take from the film is the awareness that this smart, self-aware, uncensored kid has been playing to a camera in his own head since well before Venditti came along.
75
In her directorial debut, Venditti does her best to keep a distance between herself and her subjects. But you have to wonder how much of the Billy we see on-screen is affected by the presence of Venditti's camera.
70
A heartbreaking vérité documentary by Jennifer Venditti about a misfit Maine teenager--a film that makes you think about (and question) what fitting in really entails.
70
I have seen more than 25 documentaries this year, and after a while they all start to run together, both structurally and thematically. Billy the Kid is utterly original in both respects.
70
Presenting neither an argument for medication nor its rejection, Billy the Kid is a deceptively simple portrait of a shockingly self-aware and articulate young man.
70
a movie about adolescence unlike any other; An intimate portrait of a singular personality in the making and a stark look at our culture of suspicion and conformity.
50
One of the more irresponsible eruptions in the current rash of populist nonfiction cinema.
