American Swing 2009

Scott Tobias, AV Club: American Swing could use the flair of similar portraits of disco-era debauchery like Boogie Nights or Inside Deep Throat, but it's even-handed in capturing the operation's ambition and hubris. Just don't bring an appetite. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: A shrewdly made documentary about the rise and fall of Plato's Retreat, the infamous Manhattan sex club of the '70s and '80s. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: The film treats Levenson's rapid descent as if someone had turned on the lights at a sex party: scurrying away with pity and irritation that the good times had to end. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: In the end, the impression isn't that much different from one given by the club's own hairy habitues -- lots of sleazy charm, pounds of gold chains and a smarmy shallowness that goes very, very deep. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Directors Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman don't delve deeply enough into the psyche of club founder Larry Levenson or the culture he exploited. But they do present an entertaining snapshot of his brief reign as New York's self-appointed King of Swing. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: American Swing doesn't have a particularly well-defined point of view, but it is a succinct, entertaining and valuable record of a time that in some ways now seems as remote as the Roaring '20s. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: Though sweetly reminding us that some outer-borough suburbanites did find liberation at Plato's, the film tries -- and fails -- to swing both ways, nostalgically glorifying its subject only to smugly revel in Levenson's ignominious demise. Read more