Critic Reviews
60
Metascore
Mixed or Average
positive
10(50%)
mixed
9(45%)
negative
1(5%)
Showing 20 Critic Reviews
90
Brutally honest and brilliantly acted.
80
Shows more hopelessness than optimism but is never less than honest.
80
Honest and moving.
80
If the cast is distractingly pretty, the performances are also quite fine and, in the case of Gordon-Levitt, exceptional.
80
As always, Don Cheadle is fantastic, but the film belongs to Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
80
It's without posturing or phony outrage, and offers instead something far more affecting: a deep sense of melancholy. This is the way it is, it says, and not much can be done about it.
75
This clear-eyed, low-budget drama is populated by troubled teens whose stories aren’t packaged in neat little bows. Their histories are sad, their feelings raw, their futures uncertain.
70
Often the script (co-written by Michael Bacall, who plays sardonic bipolar rich kid Chad) rings clear with mouths-of-babes declamations that all pained kids spew before downing adulthood's suck-it-up Kool-Aid.
67
The texture of Manic feels honest and the chemistry of the kids is well observed, but even the modest breakthroughs are dramatic conventions that favor the symbolic over the genuine.
63
Excellent performances redeem Jordan Melamed's gritty teenage version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
