Pulp Fiction: The Critics Who Got It Wrong
It's hard to imagine that a film so universally loved by critics and moviegoers could possibly attract bad reviews. Believe it or not, Pulp Fiction did receive it's share fair share of negativity.
Many acclaimed reviewers such as Roger Ebert hailed Pulp Fiction as not only the best film of 1994, but one of the most important movies of the 90's. Ebert said; "Like 'Citizen Kane,' Pulp Fiction is constructed in such a non-linear way that you could see it a dozen times and not be able to remember what comes next."
It's a film that will always split audiences with it's ultra-violent imagery and use of strong language, but it's hard to ignore it's excellent writing, perfectly weaved narrative and it's unfathomably cool characters.
Below we have selected some of the best negative reviews. We wonder if these reviewers still feel the same way twenty years on?
“The word tedious has not been much used in describing Pulp Fiction, but there are extended moments when it fits rather too well. Because Pulp Fiction is sporadically effective, the temptation to embrace the entire two hours and twenty-nine minutes of Tarantiniana is strong. But in truth this is a noticeably un-even film, both too inward-looking and self-centred in it’s concerns and too outward-bound in the way it strains to outrage an audience, to be successful across the board.”
— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
“The way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming.”
— Stanley Kauffman, The New Republic
“The movie they’re bubbling over may not be the same one you end up fidgeting through.”
— Lee Krenis More, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
“It has no redeeming value in itself; it’s just a joke on violence, on life... it’s the absolute essence of amorality.”
— Joe Urschel, USA Today
“Pulp Fiction is rubbish about scum.”
— M.V. Moorhead, Phoenix New Times
