70
Metascore
8 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasLos Angeles TimesKevin ThomasDeliciously funny.
- 80The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyIt possesses high points you simply don't find in lesser if more consistently funny movies.
- 80Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrIt still has several moments—most notably a completely offhanded kidnapping—when Cassavetes's inimitable off rhythms do strange and wonderful things to the conventionally written comedy. Big Trouble is just a footnote in the career of one of America's most innovative, unclassifiable filmmakers, but it's something to see.
- 70The A.V. ClubNathan RabinThe A.V. ClubNathan RabinI went into Big Trouble with exceedingly low expectations and was pleasantly surprised...Much of what makes the film so unexpectedly endearing is that Falk's incorrigible drifter seems motivated less by greed than by a boyish spirit of adventure gone horribly awry.
- 50Time OutTime OutNever hysterically funny but scattered with pleasingly OTT moments and throwaway lines, it looks as if Cassavetes merely wanted a) to prove he could make a blandly stylish commercial piece, and b) the cash.
- These isolated pockets of comic invention are balanced by long stretches of general choppiness in editing and pacing. Shot by shot, the movie is crisply staged and photographed, but the gags don`t work and the timing`s off in much of the aborted fun.
- 50TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineDirector Cassavetes here applies his remarkable talent for social observation in a light-comedy context and creates one of the strangest, and in many ways most frustrating, screen comedies in recent years.
- 50Miami HeraldBill CosfordMiami HeraldBill CosfordJohn Cassavetes has been making exquisitely personal films -- or agonizingly personal ones, depending on one's tastes -- for years now. Sometimes, they are intimate dramas (Faces, Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence). Sometimes, they are dark comedies in melodramatic dress (Gloria). And sometimes, as in the newly released Big Trouble, they are just a mess. [19 Apr 1986, p.D1]