Avis Metacritic

Chris Smith, codirector of the indie sleeper "American Movie," dreamed up this funny one-hour documentary, about five freaky homes and the people who live in them.

Smith delights in these offbeat personalities and their jerry-rigged accoutrements, but the real joy in the film comes from the happy interaction between the subjects and their creations.

Smith's film is a celebration of quirkiness, eccentricity, and certain individuals' tendency to let it all hang out, and damn the consequences.

Suffice it to say that Chris Smith's Home Movie is the most bananas episode of ''Cribs'' ever. The film is Smith's ballad of the wacky homeowner.

In true Chris Smith fashion, he seems far less interested in the homes themselves than in the touching relationship between homeowner and abode.

If one's domestic environment is a kind of autobiography, then the five households visited by this entertaining documentary reveal fascinating lives indeed.

At 60 minutes, the film never stops feeling like a guided tour, while we're wishing it was a sleepover.

There is something reassuring in seeing free-thinking individuals express their personalities so emphatically yet invitingly in the places they live.

Slight and whimsical.

The film is slight but sweetly inquisitive, and its participants are endlessly fascinating.