Steineded How sad is this?

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

guisreis The dramatic end (Ashley confesses that he loves Taylor) is nice and reduce the nonsense feeling a little bit as it justifies at least part of the craziness. Though, the beginning is bad and most of the movie is HORRIBLE. Indeed, what starts badly worsens a lot, specially when the plot changes its path with the introduction of Ash's lover's daughter. Many events in the story are not credible, almost as impossible as the dialogs. It is hard to decide what is worse: the dialogs or the soundtrack. The affair of Ash and Karen could be better developed, but how the hell her daughter April dated him in that situation? The two main characters, the immature, sexist, violent rascals, childhood friends, who steal seduced older women, are somewhat well developed, but the same may not be said about other characters. Karen's friend started and finished her affair with Taylor in a blink. Fast Bobby is an even emptier character. To resume: this is a very bad film in spite of some actors who acted well.

MBunge I'm almost at a loss for words when it comes to a film like Slingshot. The story is an awkward mix of tedium and clichés that changes into something different every 30 minutes. It too often looks more like a music video or a commercial for Wrangler jeans than it does a legitimate motion picture. The few times it stumbles into something vaguely entertaining, the moment is abandoned faster than a a blind date bailing on the Octomom. There's neither a single memorable line of dialog nor an interesting and believable human relationship in the entire production. I don't know why anyone thought this film should be made or why anyone would give money to these people to make it.Ashley and Taylor (David Arquette and Balthazar Getty) are two-bit thieves who've known each other since childhood and drifted through their whole lives together. They've made their way to Connecticut on word from a criminal acquaintance that there are real opportunities to steal up there. Ash and Taylor gin up what is apparently their standard scam, starting up affairs with lonely housewives whom they bed and then rob. Of course, such a scheme only works because Ashley and Taylor look like David Arquette and Balthazar Getty. Actual two-bit criminals are not all that attractive because a life of two-bit crime is a fairly hard road of deprivation, substance abuse and getting your ass kicked on a semi-regular basis.Taylor manages to hook up with Karen (Julianna Margulies), a woman with a loveless second marriage and a hot teenage daughter named April (Thora Birch). Taylor becomes a regular booty call for Karen when her husband is out of town and he steals some stuff from her jewelry box that won't be missed. Taylor, though, starts getting clingy and too wrapped up in his mark, desperately waiting for her summons. Meanwhile, Karen is mundanely excited and conflicted over her new affair and sets up her hornier best friend Emma (Joely Fisher) for a romp with Ashley. Now, there is something appealing about the contrast between the more emotional relationship of Karen and Taylor and the more physical union between Emma and Ashley but these filmmakers don't recognize it, so Emma quickly vanishes from the story and Taylor moves on from Karen to her daughter April.That's right, the two-bit thief transitions from banging the mom to falling in cow-eyed love with her daughter. Now, that sort of makes sense for Taylor as he's been established as a soft-headed fool who's looking for something to pull himself out of his miserable life. But a college aged girl falling in love with her adulterous mother's boy toy, especially when she's aware of their affair and Taylor tells her that he's a low-rent thief? That's messed up. April would have to have some serious mental health issues, both internally and with her mother, to find that situation romantically appealing. But these filmmakers are utterly oblivious to that and treat Taylor and April as just another two young kids sweetly falling in love.If you can guess that Taylor and April getting together makes Ashley into a third wheel, you can probably figure out where the story goes from here. Trust me though; you can't possibly imagine how poorly it ends up being told. Throw in some stuff that goes nowhere involving Ashley's difficulties with the local fence and a strange digression involving a pee-wee hockey player that bookends the movie and that is Slingshot.The performances in this film are fine, though none of the characters have any depth or substance for the actors to work with. This movie is also only 90 minutes long, so I suppose it gets some points for not extending its crappiness out any further than that.Slingshot is the sort of bad film you get when people who aren't that talented throw a bunch of individual story ideas into a script but never develop any of them. Add in a style of filmmaking that looks like it was inspired by watching too much television and you've got a thoroughly unenjoyable product. Skip this thing.

mike-murphy-2 This should have been a moody, gritty, movie which lingered in the memory as an exposition of relationship where the dominant personality only survives because the personality being dominated sees no hope of change.The acting was intense and skillful, the dialogue worked but the movie was irritatingly ineffective: too many distance shots that suggested lack of focus rather than a broader picture. Poor flow. The first 5 minutes could have been missed out altogether.I suspect that, with a different edit, this movie could have been compelling.In its current form it is flat, formless and tremendously disappointing.

checkacheck Glad to see this is finally out on DVD. It's nice to see these actors on screen and in roles that suit them well. Gotta love Arquette, Birch, Marquiles and Getty. I wish more movies like this were made these days. It felt, to me, like a movie in the vein of the great indie dramas of the early 90s - the ones that also had a good amount of real life humor but also had real characters. Hopefully it's not a dying breed. I don't mean to imply that this movie is a talky, unplotted movie like Clerks or Pompetus of Love (nothing against those films). This is absolutely a genre film - a con film - it's just done in a sort of different tone than others. I don't know how this movie did theatrically but it's a definitely worth a rent. I think of it as a hang out movie, to use a Quentin Tarantino phrase, the kind of movie where you really enjoy hanging out with the characters.