Leaves of Grass: Critic Reviews

The movie bubbles with intellectual curiosity and narrative ambition. And for that I dig it, even if Leaves of Grass has the habit of swerving and sometimes lurching from tone to tone.

Mr. Norton is a pleasure to watch, and so is everyone else.

Leaves of Grass is part goofy drug comedy, part shocking bloodbath. It's a riot of tones and genres, but unlike that other recent hybrid, Pineapple Express, the parts add up to something larger.

The movie is a showcase for digital technology and for Norton's virtuosity, but I wish it weren't such a weightless shambles.

Tim Blake Nelson's Leaves of Grass is some kind of sweet, wacky masterpiece. It takes all sorts of risks, including a dual role with Edward Norton playing twin brothers, and it pulls them off.

It's just another oblique backfire from Tim Blake Nelson, whose work as a writer-director in general wallows in a bog of mediocrity.

One Edward Norton performance is often enough reason to see a movie, so it comes as no surprise that the prospect of two -- he plays twins -- is very much the main attraction, and reward, of Leaves of Grass.

As a writer-director, Nelson keeps the laughs coming at a steady pace, and never condescends to his articulate redneck characters.

The mirror image gag is one of the oldest in the book, and yet, if done well, it never really gets old.

An identical twins comic crime drama goes seriously wrong.

An offbeat thriller that is deepened -- rather than derailed -- by its tricky shift from darkly funny to just plain dark.

Essentially Deliverance cross-bred with A History of Violence...Leaves of Grass is a peculiar rural yarn and a sweet, assured examination of lost innocence and brotherhood that succeeds largely because of Norton's multi-faceted performance.

This is a very personal film from Nelson that is jam packed with ideas and heavily influenced by the Coen Brothers...

The DVD extras give the film a boost with a well done "making-of?" featurette and a commentary of the film by director Nelson, star Norton and producer William Migliore.

It's a jarringly realistic hybrid that echoes the more surreal aspects of real, rural life, and Norton walks/ambles through it all, sporting dueling personalities and distinct accents, but one very serious heart.

Many cliches in uneven and odd mix of guffaws and philosophical analysis. . .[C]onsiderable violence surprisingly erupts...[M]ost fun is watching Norton interact with Norton.

Suffice to say that Blake Nelson doesn't have the visual gifts of his Minnesotan mentors, leaving us undistracted by surface flair and fully focused on his cartoonish characters and ragged, oddly callow script.

... through it all, the two performances by Edward Norton feel natural, relaxed, utterly unlike a gimmick.

This is Tim Blake Nelson's affectionate and curious vision of his native Oklahoma, and what he sees makes for a uniquely restless, ribald motion picture.

Emerging director Tim Blake Nelson takes another step up with this comedy drama starring Edward Norton in what might go down as Norton's best performance yet.

It's not the violence itself that bothers me, it's just that it completely destroys the tone of the movie.

You could get whiplash from his movie's mood swings.

The picture loses its mind on an abrasive hunt for irreverence, twisting something securely oddball into an affected, unnecessarily toxic tale of brilliant knuckleheads living up to their Tulsa potential.

a fitfully enjoyable but unsatisfying playground of ambition and occasional wit

Edgy, intelligent and unusual. And also uneven. [It] has so many good things going for it, though, that while you can't overlook the flaws, you might be willing to forgive them.