Metacritic reviews

Mr. Bogosian's venomously funny play, which he adapted himself for the screen, is given warmth and generosity by Mr. Linklater, whose elegantly fluid direction and great skill with actors are accentuated by the play's spareness.

The movie is dark, intense and disturbing.

The fierce and funny film version has been directed by Texan Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise) with rare grace and compassion.

Nevertheless, the cast of mainly unknowns is so good, and Linklater is so adept at playing them off one another, that the two-hour running time never seems overextended.

SubUrbia is depressing comedy -- the more so because director Richard Linklater's satirical picture of youthful alienation rings painfully true.

Linklater gets great performances from his young cast, and you'll find yourself thinking about the characters and their travails well after the movie's finish.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Linklater's (and Bogosian's) running commentary on disaffected suburban youth is that it doesn't bore you half as much as it should.

SubUrbia is about 95% dialogue, some of which is clever, but much of which is pointless.

Then there are times when the humor and the pathos of these losers catch you off-guard. Those moments are nearly profound, and elevate the film above the slacker cliches in which it wallows.

With each succeeding picture, Linklater seemed to grow as a filmmaker, just as his characters became more defined and developed. But with his fourth picture, subUrbia, he takes two giant steps backward.