Gummo poster & wallpaper
Get movie widget Recommend it Add to Favorites

Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, Darby Dougherty, Chloë Sevigny ... see more see more... , Carisa Bara , Linda Manz , Max Perlich , Wendall Carr , Jason Guzak , Carisa Glucksman , Charles Matthew Coatney , Daniel Martin , Ellen M. Smith

In this elliptical ensemble piece, which marks the directorial debut of indie bad boy Harmony Korine, the teens of tornado-scarred Xenia, OH, kill cats, tape their boobies, arm-wrestle, bathe, cross-d... read more read more...ress, huff glue, avoid perverts, pay to have sex with retarded girls, lift makeshift dumbbells to the strains of Madonna's "Like a Prayer," fight, cuss, shave their eyebrows, undergo cancer treatment, euthanize senior citizens, and pee on passing cars. A hallucinatory barrage of images and scenarios with little in the way of traditional plot, Gummo has been variously described as a surrealist joke, a visual poem, and a worm's-eye view of white-trash suffering. The main characters include Solomon (Jacob Reynolds), who sells cat carcasses to a middleman who procures them for use at a local Chinese restaurant; his mother (Linda Manz), who teaches him to tap dance while reminiscing about her dead husband; Tummler (Nick Sutton), a mullet-haired local sex symbol; a midget (Bryant L. Crenshaw); a pair of boy-crazy, bleach-blond sisters named Dot (Chloe Sevigny) and Helen (Carisa Bara); a slut with a lump in her breast (Lara Tosh); a group of drunken louts; and Bunny Boy (Jacob Sewell), who wanders the town enigmatically in a pair of long pink ears. In between scenes of these characters enacting their bizarre routines, Korine intersperses impressionistic and quasi-documentary scenes with voice-over narration that ranges from incest memoirs to arty dialogue along the lines of "He's got what it takes to be a legend: He's got a marvelous persona." Shot just outside Nashville, TN, Gummo includes costume designs by Korine's then-girlfriend, Chloe Sevigny, who also plays Dot and who previously starred in the Korine-scipted, Larry Clark-directed Kids. Jacob Reynolds would go on to appear in Getting to Know You, though few of the director's other discoveries have appeared on film since. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Flixster Users

74% liked it

20,447 ratings

Critics

33% liked it

36 critics

R, 1 hr. 28 min.

Directed by: Harmony Korine

Release Date: October 17, 1997

Invite friends to see

DVD Release Date: March 20, 2001

Stats: 2,093 reviews

report incorrect info

Photos

Gummo Gummo Gummo Jacob Reynolds Gummo Gummo Gummo Gummo Nick Sutton Gummo
Upload a Photo | View All Gummo Photos

Your Rating


clear rating

Flixster Reviews (2,093)

  • fb100002359227440
    March 17, 2012
    fb100002359227440
    With the mix of surrealism and realism, Harmony's vision about the "white trash" and boring and strange lifes is unique and for me one of the most importants American movies from the 90's. Gummo is a disturbing portrait, showing to the audience a great acting by Jacob Reynolds. F... read moreresh.
  • bbcfloridabound
    March 9, 2012
    bbcfloridabound
    A Very Sick and dirty movie. 1/2 star
  • theunknownhobo
    September 24, 2011
    theunknownhobo
    Now don't get me wrong, I love movies that make no sense and Gummo certainly fits that criteria but I found it was so absurd at times that it even lost its confusion flavour. It made me laugh, it disgusted me in certain parts and it certainly had me uttering "wtf" under my breath... read more, but it didn't make me think as all good disorientation movies should. I still do not understand why it has achieved such cult success and would warrant that Korine be lost in the wastelands of failed directors, because this movie was nothing but regurgitated trash.
  • LoughnerWasLucid
    April 11, 2010
    LoughnerWasLucid
    This is a film about your neighborhood. If your interests include cats, hay-rides, and Jeffrey Dahmer.
  • ythelastman89
    November 16, 2009
    ythelastman89
    There is so much said about human behavior in this film that has never been able to be captured before. Some might call it nihilistic or dumb, but it depicts a reality that is hauntingly real. It might be way too much of a reality check for some, to see the true disgustingly beau... read moretiful world we live in. You can just see how much time and energy was poured into this movie to get a simple message across: We're not perfect. The tone is almost set like a horror, which it really kind've is. The acting was actually really amazing for the look they were going for and was probably the most effective aspect of the film. Years and years of warped generations can be seen so easily and that makes it all the more disturbing.
  • dunmyer
    October 17, 2009
    dunmyer
    "Gummo" is a disturbing and completely unique work of art by one of the few cinematic geniuses of our time, Harmony Korine. After exploding onto the film scene with his screenplay for "Kids" (written when he was only 22), Korine made his directorial debut two years later with "Gu... read moremmo," an impressionistic film based on what Korine saw while living in an Appalachia-like small town in the backwoods of Ohio. Apparently he saw a lot there that horrified him, and he brings that horror to you in the most raw, unfiltered way possible.

    Throughout the film, I found myself saying, "Harmony Korine is the poet of chaos." There's never been anyone like him, and I suspect there never will be another.

    "Gummo" contains a lot of what appears to be documentary footage taken in and around the town of Xenia, Ohio. Interspersed with this are scenes with actors who play the townsfolk. In most cases, Korine appears to use non-professional actors, plus Chloe Sevigny, who has a small but indelible part. Sevigny at the time had not yet become an established actress, having just appeared in "Kids," her debut film. Now of course she's gone onto major acting roles, such as on HBO's "Big Love." For "Gummo," she dyed her hair and eyebrows platinum blonde, and the effect is mesmerizing and frightening. Also unforgettable is the scene where she appears topless with black electrical tape on her nipples, a la Wendy O. Williams.

    But the film is mostly focused on the troubled boys of the town, who go around torturing cats and each other. Korine trains his freakshow gaze also on the many people of the town who are semi-retarded. It becomes hard to define retarded (by which I mean mentally disabled in the clinical sense) when so many of the intellectually normal townspeople appear to have chosen to remain at the mental level of a retarded person. Korine appears to be very interested in this social phenomenon, as I have been in my own life. I call it the bizarre phenomenon of voluntary retardation.

    Korine blurs the line between the clinically and voluntarily retarded in a disturbing way by including some footage of disabled people. Especially shocking is the footage of a woman who appears to have Down Syndrome playing a garishly made-up prostitute who is pimped out to the local teenage boys by her brother. That is the one scene in the film that brought tears to my eyes.

    Anyone from a lower-class background (such as I) will recognize many of the faces and imagery here. Finally an artist has come along who stares into the face of lower-class horror and doesn't look away.

    There are substantial weaknesses in the film, however, particularly in the direction of the boys who play the biggest roles. First is the young boy with the weird hairdo who is pictured in the movie poster; the other is his older sidekick. These inseparable boys are played by semi-trained actors who appear to have no idea what they are doing or what the film is trying to say. They walk around awkwardly, seemingly saying to themselves, "Why does this wacky director force me to wear this ridiculous hairdo?" Nothing they do seems authentic. Either Korine intentionally worked this awkwardness into the film for a distancing effect, to archly differentiate it from the more documentary-like footage, or he just did not know what he was doing with these actors. I tend to think it was the latter.

    Also problematic is Korine's relentlessly negative view. As troubled as the under-class is, it is not 100% screwed up. Korine's view is so skewed toward the negative that at times it seems polemical and limited. In my mind, the hallmark of a great artist is a holistic view. Korine may be capable of that, but he does not exhibit it here. (He does exhibit it in his 2008 near-masterpiece "Mister Lonely," where he has the guts to show love.)

    There is no doubt, though, that "Gummo" more brilliantly captures the horrific aspects of the impoverished rural under-class than anything that ever came before it. Highly recommended for fans of true art who have a strong stomach for nihilism.
  • SirPant
    September 23, 2009
    SirPant
    This is a great little film. It won?t be to everybody?s tastes but it?s a gem, albeit, a grubby one . Harmony Korine is an underappreciated genius!
  • 366weirdmovies
    May 6, 2009
    366weirdmovies
    A largely plotless, impressionistic and depressing tour of the hopeless white trash residents of Xenia, OH. A lot like what would result if someone took home videos of that embarassing welfare-addicted branch of the family no one likes to talk about and mixed them in a blender w... read moreith experimental shorts from film school; it's sometimes interesting, more frequently incoherent and annoying.
  • 5oclockcoffee
    May 3, 2009
    5oclockcoffee
    How can American society be so stupid and degradated?

    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .

    The movie itself is not bad, the first scene is "artistic cool", but it´s nothing but a waste of time.
    Another independent American film. Another movie to shock. Chloe Sevigny and her typic... read moreal roles.

    *I´m not missing the whole point as some people can say. I am only tired of these "innovative, rare, amazing" films.
  • kiriyamakazou
    April 24, 2009
    kiriyamakazou
    A pointless, depressing and vile piece of crap. There are no characters to feel anything for, other than hate. The film is just tasteless in a very tacky way, but it seems to think it is saying something. There's no plot, there's no relevance. It's a string of random scenes, wher... read moree everybody acts weird to disguise just how bad the film is. Korine completely misses the mark with this arrogant and annoying film.

View All Gummo Reviews

Critic Reviews

Emanuel Levy
April 28, 2008
Emanuel Levy, Variety

Enfant terrible Harmony Korine makes a bizarre, idiosyncratic directing debut with his uncompromising look at youth alientaion in Middle-America, whose downbeat tone and off-putting imagery should app... Full Review

Paul Tatara
April 28, 2008
Paul Tatara, CNN.com

C'mon, Harmony. Mano a boyo. What are you really trying to prove here? Full Review

Liam Lacey
April 12, 2002
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

In real life, this town was devastated by a tornado 20 years ago. According to Korine's version of things, it never recovered. Full Review

Janet Maslin
January 1, 2000
Janet Maslin, New York Times

No conceivable competition [this year] will match the sourness, cynicism and pretension of Korine's debut feature. Full Review

Edward Guthmann
January 1, 2000
Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle

Korine's objective is so narrow and mean, and his viewpoint so colored by smug, adolescent condescension, that Gummo comes off like a mean-spirited prank. Full Review

Jonathan Rosenbaum
January 1, 2000
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Perhaps Gummo was dismissed by many people because it obsessively investigates the gray area between being an object and being an actor in which filmed people necessarily exist. Full Review

Fernando F. Croce
February 7, 2010
Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

A glue-sniffer's reverie and an aestheticized episode of Beavis & Butthead, explicitly and bracingly set up as an act of cinematic vandalism Full Review

Rob Nelson
August 20, 2009
Rob Nelson, City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul

Gummo aims to be provocatively anti-everything: anti-Christian, anti-feline, non-narrative, unpolished, visually dyslexic, and imaginatively off-putting. Full Review

April 28, 2008
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Harsh, funny, repellent and occasionally quite moving. Full Review

April 28, 2008
Film4

It's bleak, brutal and redeemed only by Reynolds's outstanding performance. Full Review

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Cast

More Like This

Click a thumb to vote on that suggestion, or add your own suggestions.

  • Putty Hill
    Putty Hill (100%)
  • Slacker
    Slacker (100%)
  • Tokyo no yado (An Inn in Tokyo)
    Tokyo no yado (An Inn in Tokyo) (100%)
  • Grey Gardens
    Grey Gardens (67%)

More Movies like Gummo

Facts

No facts approved yet. Be the first

Gummo : Watch Free on TV

Gummo Trivia

  • Which Marx Brother wasn't in the films?  Answer »
  • In response to the question "This is a correction on the quesion about the Marx brothers. There is not a Gummo but there is a..." This question is wrong - there really WAS a Gummo in the Marx Bros (briefly).  Answer »
  • Which of these films was NOT directed by, or in part by, Larry Clark?  Answer »
  • What was the name of the fifth Marx brother?  Answer »
More Gummo Trivia

Movie Quizzes

Create a Quiz |

All Quizzes

Video Clips

Upload a Video |

All Gummo Videos

Meet Other Fans

Add Gummo to favorites

Recent News

No recent headlines. Got one?

Recent Lists

Make a List |

View All Lists

Most Popular Skin

No skins yet. Interested in creating one?