Critic Reviews
64
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
8(62%)
mixed
5(38%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 13 Critic Reviews
80
The film survives cuts to deliver some great, gross, comic book capers. And rock history gets its most intelligent illustration since Mean Streets.
80
All in all a fascinating film with an outstanding musical score consisting of jukebox hits from the period.
80
Price's vision was realistic and romantic at the same time, the violence painful but also sensual, the mood charged with a sweet hopelessness. Philip Kaufman's tough but tender film emphasizes this double vision. It's like Grease with brass knuckles. [16 July 1979, p.93]
75
The Wanderer can turn an anxious tone to creepy and phantasmagoric. Kaufman's brilliant camera work relies on the exaggerated style of comic books, and the visual energy throughout is gritty.
75
This is a giddy parody of gang pictures, West Side Story without the music and set in the Bronx of the '60s. The music is solid early '60s rock 'n' roll ( My Boyfriend's Back, The Wanderer ) and the acting is broad and often silly.
75
You may find yourself having more kinky fun in The Wanderers than you have had in any American movie for a long time, but when you try to grasp the meaning of what you've seen, you find yourself clutching at moonbeams. [31 Aug 1979]
70
What revs up the movie and keeps it humming is the driving energy of early rock, with its innocent/rebellious spirit, and its theme that teens must find their own ways to love and fight.
70
Despite an uneasy blend of nostalgia and violence, The Wanderers is a well-made and impressive film. Philip Kaufman, who also co-scripted with his wife, Rose [from the novel by Richard Price], has accurately captured the urban angst of growing up in the 1960s.
60
Worth a look, if only for the surreal groupings of the gangs (The Wongs, the Del Bombers and the Fordham Baldies...that's right, they're bald).
60
The Wanderers is a well-made movie that leaves a so-what impression. [27 July 1979, p.B1]
