Avis Metacritic

Wayne Kramer thankfully refuses to cloak his excessiveness in hedge-betting self-consciousness and the result is a gratifyingly disreputable B-movie blow out.

Kramer, 10 years removed from his lone critical success, "The Cooler," and writer Adam Minarovich aren't exactly aping Tarantino, if only because they don't have the talent or inclination to aim that high.

It’s coherent enough, but entirely too long and unpleasant when it could have been one brutishly edgy hoot after another.

Director Wayne Kramer (Running Scared, Crossing Over) makes plain his cartoon-comedy intentions early and often via comic-book-panel-style title cards. The presiding atmosphere of over-the-top zaniness, however, is of a broad, banal sort involving little people, rampant nudity, and quasi-religious nonsense.

Despite its noteworthy cast who presumably had some time to fill between better gigs, this is the sort of instantly disposable B-movie effort that Quentin Tarantino would have chucked in the wastebasket after a first draft.

"Hee Haw” meets “Pulp Fiction” at the meth lab: That describes the style of Pawn Shop Chronicles, a hillbilly grindhouse yawp of a movie that belches in your face and leaves a sour stink.

The problem with Pawn Shop Chronicles is not the fact that it is a clone of "Pulp Fiction." The problem is that it is a lousy clone.

Only one gag (involving a town’s rival barbers) sticks; the rest is just whistlin’ Dixie.

The film doesn’t feel like a fresh riff on familiar tropes so much as a bad cover of Pulp Fiction.

It’s all very first draft, with a layer of supernatural permeating the events that suggests added attempts to connect three wildly disparate storylines.