Brewster McCloud (1970) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by laird ★★★★½ 4

  Turns out watching this as an "adult" instead of a high schooler who wanted to see more movies like Harold and Maude was a much more rewarding experience. This is Robert Altman's Playtime, a sprawling, somewhat freeform series of gag-filled scenes that are loaded with social commentary/criticism. It's an incredibly angry movie that uses a spoonful of sugar to help the vitriol go down.

  It's also about failure. The opening joke is the MGM lion opening its mouth, but there's silence instead of the typical roar, then you hear, "I forgot the opening line." Then an old white lady (the Wicked Witch of the West, it turns out) sings "The Star Spangled Banner" out of key, blames the black marching…

• Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½

  90

  Robert Altman's films always seem to offer a feeling of spontaneity, of life bursting at the seams, so it's fitting to see this take shape as a political absurdist comedy in the form of Brewster McCloud. About as funny as anything he ever made, with riffs on the wonderment of this miraculous and terrible world. There are hints of Nashville but it's more easy-going and aware of itself. Bird sh*t, car chases, astroworld, incompetent cops - in sections, this film runs parallel alongside Jacques Tati and Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker. Euphoric filmmaking.

• Review by David Sims ★★★★★ 7

  I forgot the opening line!

• Review by Sean Baker 8

  Revisited the film on the new Warner Archives Blu-ray and still feel the same way... that it's one hot mess. But at least it introduced Shelley Duvall to the world. And it looks good... shot by two amazing DP's. Supposedly, Robert Altman replaced cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth with Lamar Boren. Good soundtrack as well. I want to listen to more Merry Clayton.

  Scan looks good. No extras on disc except for trailer.

• Review by Muriel 2

  came for shelley duvall and her huge eyelashes, stayed for some of the most batsh*t crazy filmmaking i’ve ever seen. robert altman was one of a kind

• Review by theriverjordan ★★★★½ 9

  “Brewster McCloud” is one of the most hard career pivots from commercial to crazy in Hollywood history.

  Director Robert Altman, in the same year of release as the cultural phenomenon “Mash,” followed up that monster success with a movie about a serial killer that leaves bird poop as a calling card.

  “Brewster McCloud” seems like it should be an aberration; a mistake that Altman or the studio would wish to hide as they pumped “Mash” for all the money it was worth. It would be a fitting fate for a movie with a running theme of failure. The first line of “McCloud” is, after all, “I forgot the opening line.”

  Instead, Altman’s film is a pigeon poop-besotted burst of creative…

• Review by Carlos Valladares ★★★★★ 2

  We really do not talk enough about how f*cking sick, twisted, deranged, horny, outrageous, hateful, insipid, vile, bold, dreamy, surface, useless, nihilist, hot, and sublime this is. MVP is Shelley Duvall's incantatory delivery, in that Houston drone of hers, of lines like "Oh, diarrhea. That's tough. I'm a race-car driver." I really only want to be a professor in order to spring this upon unsuspecting undergrads and grads. When they praise U.S. culture, they really mean Brewster McCloud.

  (Needless to say, the better Altman film of 1970. Leonard Cohen has great taste!)

  Also, aggressively ACAB. A contender for Altman's most bitter film — and that's saying a LOT.

• Review by The_Shape_ 5

  "How I yearn to throw
  myself into endless space, and float above the awful abyss."
  - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Starting with the MGM lions roar, muted, with a dubbed, "I forgot the opening line", this movie has a lot of unique humor.

  I liked a lot of the running gags, like: Hines/Hanes, "sir Frank", or the pull-up masturbator. Also liked how the professor giving monologues slowly transforms into a bird as the movie progresses.

  I loved the bird excrement calling card of the strangler. Especially when Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West) dies in ruby slippers, covered in bird sh*t, while some notes of "Over the Rainbow" plays, haha.

  This Fellini-inspired movie follows a Where's Waldo-looking Brewster…

• Review by Cory ★★★★½ 10

  Brewster McCloud might be one of the best stoner comedies that doesn't have anything to do with being a stoner, so I guess it was a happy accident that I ended up watching this ode to the absurd on 4/20. You can practically smell the weed that was consumed through your television. On paper, a dark comedy about a young man whose dream in life is to literally fly like a bird who will stop at nothing to make it a reality should not work. It's script seems like it was literally drafted on dozens of King Size rolling papers that were promptly rolled and smoked once it was finalized. Robert Altman—who was a huge pothead—clearly undestood how to make…

• Review by siobhan ★★★★½ 1

  omg i'm so obsessed with this!!! it was so gloriously chaotic and a majorly underrated altman!! i also learned yesterday that altman met shelley duvall at a party in texas and she was just there as the wife of an artist but her energy took over the whole room so altman spent 6 months trying to convince her to be an actress bc she never had any interest in it. but eventually she gave in and left texas for the first time in her life to shoot this film in hollywood and the rest is history! what a queen!

• Review by Joe ★★★★½

  Robert Altman's Where's Waldo

• Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  Robert Altman's anti-materialist comedy with songs. Every bit as funny (and obnoxious) as MASH, but in a completely different way applying some of Altman's favorite formal gambits. It is very close to the kind of free for all, Altman enjoyed that drove 70s auteurist critics crazy, but this for all the absurdist touches and intentional obtuseness feels better shaped than most of his later experiments in this vein. The acting is first rate (Shelley Duvall in particular) and Altman comic invention vignettes are in top form. Very bitter and very angry. Every bit with the cops is hilarious and more movies should have bird sh*t jokes. It loses me a bit in the final scenes (every moment after Court falls strikes me as Altman at his worst), but it remains charming and endearing as few self-conscious film maudits.