Choke 2008

Luke Y. Thompson, L.A. Weekly: Honestly, this is like the anti-SEX AND THE CITY. I liked that movie, but if you're a dude who hated it and got dragged by your girlfriend anyway, this is the appropriate payback date film. Read more

Ben Lyons, At the Movies: This movie is only marginally enjoyable. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's bizarrely flat -- it has no affect. It's like Palahniuk translated into Robotese. Read more

Mark Rahner, Seattle Times: There's a lot going on in Choke, and it may be more than first-time director Clark Gregg can handle. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: Palahniuk's book wasn't nearly as sharp or edgy as it was trying to be, but it's a sack of razors compared with this limp adaptation. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: There's plenty to offend here. But there's also plenty to enjoy, Rockwell's performance topping that list. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Choke is disappointing not for what it is but what it could have been. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: As the story of a wallowing pig, Choke is often pretty entertaining, but when it comes to where-do-I-come-from poignancy, it can't always keep from gagging. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: Gregg's unstable direction mutes the humor and confuses the schmaltz, yielding a tonally discombobulated film. And a thoroughly discombobulated critic. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Rockwell has an off-center charm and, as his gorgon mother, Anjelica Huston is more imposing than this movie deserves. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Gregg's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel has a fluid grasp of the impossible and possible, not to mention the profane and sacred. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: A goofy blend of quirky characters, strange situations and wrong relationships, with just enough sadness running beneath its eccentricity to keep things somewhat real, Choke is a conscious oddball of a movie. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: It's an indelibly warped cartoon of lust and despair. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Maybe this stuff works on the page, in Chuck Palahniuk's darkly comic novel, but Choke is awfully tough to digest on the screen. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Bobs around on a tide of misanthropy, occasionally surprising us with small moments of brilliance. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Nonstop weirdness plus an oddly touching performance by Rockwell make for an uneven, fitfully funny film. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Choke tries to be dirty but manages merely to be dingy. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: I don't know what to tell you about a dismal bucket of nauseating swill called Choke, except to warn that if you spend hard-earned money to sit through it, you deserve to do exactly what the title implies. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: [Director] Gregg makes the movie work as a sordid sex satire, but falls short in rising above that. And the many loathsome-turned-pathetic characters make Choke, in the end, a bit hard to swallow. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Choke is too low-key for its own good, and neither Rockwell nor Macdonald seems able to find the right psychic momentum to move this thing along the way it needs to be. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: With Choke, director Clark Gregg has maintained writer Chuck Palahniuk's voice but the men and women populating the film come across as the half-finished constructs of a filmmaker's imagination. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: All the pieces are here, but you have to glue the kite together to make it fly. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: An annoying little film that attempts to be lascivious but is merely ludicrous. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Self-destructive, Oedipally fixated slackers everywhere can rest safe in the knowledge that at last they have a voice in pop culture. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Sam Rockwell's resistance to boos serves him well in Choke, a black comedy that actually improves upon the Chuck Palahniuk novel that spawned it. Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: 'Choke' never manages to be as edgy, amusing, insightful or plain messy as you'd hope it would be, especially considering its 'naughty' promotional poster and the distribution of anal beads as a marketing device. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Though there are moments of viable dark humor, it feels glib and lacks the sardonic quality of the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: Choke doesn't suffer so much from downscaled production values as from direction and packaging that just don't match Palahniuk's imaginative brio in cinematic terms. Read more

Robert Wilonsky, Village Voice: Yawn. Read more