Swim Little Fish Swim

This admittedly uneven first feature stands out for the way it sneaks up on you.

It subtly counteracts the cliché that creative expression can save your life by making its protagonist a hipster Peter Pan whose creative expression is an excuse not to grow up.

There are small moments that shiver with chaos and uncontrollable emotion in Swim Little Fish Swim.

What ultimately holds the film back, I believe, is its tendency to err too far on the side of that sweetness — it indulges too often in the hallmarks of the mediocre indie, the stuff a press release might call quirk, to level its more substantial points with real seriousness.

[A] slight, predictable debut.

The performances often enliven the stale material... But the script's naïveté is galling.

Mumbly dialogue, relentlessly jittery camerawork, a star who is also co-director and co-writer: Yes, it’s time for another movie that mistakes the claustrophobic world of young New York artsy types for something interesting.