Prince

It revives hope for a pop-art cinema that's capable of treating characters like actual human beings rather than pawns on a chess board.

A strong, creative addition to the crowded coming-of-age genre.

Ultimately, Prince is unwilling to follow through on its darker impulses, while equally reluctant to go the whole nine yards in its lighter comedy register. Even so, its stylistic brio makes Prince enough of a live wire to bode well for de Jong’s future.

A slender, morally simplified fable that makes up for its tonal and narrative imprecisions with considerable visual energy, musical pizzazz, and a panoply of colorful characters.

Like a purple Lamborghini — or an adolescent boy's first, er, encounter — the film is too fast but almost unquestionably fun.

At times tender and at others unflinchingly brutal, this small drama of innocence and temptation could have aimed much higher.

The not-so-fresh Prince charts a familiar cautionary tale about the bad choices economically disadvantaged young men sometimes make early in life, but to its credit, it seldom feels hackneyed or cliched.