a review
https://deadline.com/2023/04/beau-is-afraid-review-joaquin-phoenix-ari-aster-1235321342/
shareThat makes this overlong, often exhausting and sometimes indulgent new movie as much a curiosity as anything else.
It is bound to be a cult favorite, but also will be as divisive as they come, the kind of movie you can take bets on which is the first scene that will cause mass walkouts. Those who stay — and that will undoubtedly include the Aster faithful panting for the next film from the man who dreamed up Hereditary and Midsommar — will find much to chew on and, perhaps, to scratch their heads about. This isn’t a movie that is easy to describe, much less digest, its horrors seen through the eyes of a man not ready to walk outside, nor who may never be anything but afraid.
As feared this is gonna be some Mother! (2017) like waffle. I can picture it now. 'Artsy' types praising it as a true masterpiece and discussing what it all means whilst most people will call it a piece of trash.
This has flop written all over it too, financially. Three hours long and weird as shit to boot. A budget of $35 million so we're looking for this to make $70 million at least just to break even. I say it won't! share
Some other snippets from Rotten Tomatoes reviews;
It’s the most magnificent act of oversharing you’ll see all year, a banquet of all the TMI you can eat, just for the price of a ticket. Though when you think about it, shouldn’t Aster be paying us?
Running at over three hours, Beau Is Afraid is a colossal recovered memory of mock Oedipal agony which is scary, boring and sad in approximate proportions of 1 to 4 to 2.
As [Beau is Afraid] drags on into its second and then third hour, you just feel like you’re being punk’d, and Ari Aster is getting the last (and only) laugh.
There will surely be a small contingent who embrace this as their new favorite movie, but three hours doesn’t feel at all reasonable for such an uneven collection of sketches.
The issue here isn’t the moment-to-moment loopiness. It’s that the film’s cumulative unmanageableness soon starts to look like a put-on -- Aster seems much more interested in pushing the limits of his audience, rather than his own.share