thedarkknight-99999 I admired the underlying message, and the seemingly clever imagery. I loved the unique atmosphere that is similar to Terry Gilliam's Brazil. And I was fascinated by the gorgeous animation and the designs of the animatronic bugs. But I think this movie is very self-indulgent for its own good. Very, very self-indulgent that the most important action in the movie, which led to all its series of events, happened very quick and there wasn't enough focus on it.The movie's biggest concern is using metaphors that I really didn't care to figure out what they stand for. Therefore, I wasn't engaged with the story nor the characters. Also, the tone of the movie is very slow and cold exactly like the acting.I'm really frustrated because Naked Lunch is my first Cronenberg film, and I was ready to enter his universe, and to be presented to his distinctive directorial style and to his wonderful work as I heard and read many times. That being said, Naked Lunch won't be my last Cronenberg movie because I really felt there was something special and really good deep inside this movie in spite of the fact that I didn't like it.(6/10)

maxastree In reaction to the overwhelmingly plastic culture of the 80s, 90s media started to regurgitate grainy images of "the Beats", fifties counter-cultural icons that could be easily reduced to a handful of key works, stylized photographs and design-heavy biographies dropping names like Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Ginsgberg and of course Burroughs - a man who's inherited wealth, tragic past and anthropological interest in obscure cultures made him a hipster, low rent bon vivant and comedy artist all at once, lampooning Americana whilst somehow representing it at the same time.The film "Naked Lunch" is something of a failure. It has some fascinating qualities, such as Ornette Colemans jazz score, and Judy Davis's somewhat crazed depiction of Burroughs wife in the film which creates a story opening that has a real sense of purpose, but then it all goes astray because, essentially, this is a film without a functioning plot.Sure, the main character has a motivation: after the accidental shooting of his wife, he moves to North Africa, creating screeds of experimental writing under the influence of painkillers and alcohol as an escape, or perhaps a form of therapy. That's characterization though, whats the story actually about? Essentially, this movie is about typewriters, broken typewriters, hallucinatory moments, various confessions of homosexual guilt or reflection, and static, overly smug exchanges between Burroughs screen stand-in and his compatriots that bare witness to a story that goes nowhere.Matters are made worse by location restrictions, so the crew shoot on sound stages covered with sand and prop work. Not only does the story evaporate, but the sense of place and time is oddly unconvincing also. I almost feel after seeing this movie that it could have served better as a stage play, with a bit of tweaking. Did I mention Peter Weller is in this film? He must have hoped something as diametrically opposite to his role in Robocop would have helped his career, but his casting just contributes to the list of misplaced decisions that created this picture. After this film made back a fraction of its budget (people like Peter Suschitzky and Howard Shore hardly work for free) Weller disappeared from wide release films for many years. The least flattering thing to say about Cronenbergs "Naked Lunch", a film that isn't really related to the wild satire and poetry of the famous book, is that it continued to reduce the image of Burroughs to an aesthetic, as if the death, addiction and suffering in his life could just be recycled as part of a conveniently "hip" pop culture style.Cronenberg and Burroughs themselves are people of considerable talent, for sure, but not here.

poe426 There was a time when the only filmmaker making films who seemed like a likely candidate to bring Philip K. Dick's A SCANNER DARKLY to the Big Screen was David Cronenberg. Maybe not... What NAKED LUNCH has to say about WRITING is interesting; what it has to say otherwise is open to interpretation. "Guilt is the key," we're told at one point. Certainly, guilt played a big part in Burroughs's life as a writer- but, beyond that...? "Exterminate all rational thought," Peter Weller as Bill Lee says: "I gave up writing when I was ten. Too dangerous. I've found my profession. I'm an exterminator." Huffing the poisons he sprays to exterminate bugs causes him to hallucinate (Or DOES it...?). He sees a large bug, which literally talks out of its ass; it tells him that his wife is from Interzone, Incorporated and that she must be killed. He meets a Mugwump, a creature that quite literally OOZES sex, who gives him a ticket to Interzone and suggests that he procure a typewriter- a Clark Nova ("It has mythic resonance.")- and begin writing. He visits Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider), who mixes up a "cure" for Lee's wife. Says Benway: "It's like an agent- an agent who's come to believe his own cover story, but who's in there, hiding in a larval state, just waiting for the proper moment to hatch out." Lee then kills his wife (played by Judy Davis) while playing "William Tell" (a game wherein you shoot an apple off of someone's head). He then flees into the Interzone. There, his typewriter metamorphosizes into a talking bugwriter and he wonders (of homosexuals): "Could I be one of those sub-human things...?" He is, of course, and comes to the conclusion that "America is not a young land. It is old... and dirty and evil." Says the bugwriter: "... a writer lives the sad truth like anyone else. The only difference is- he files a report on it." Cronenberg has filed his report, and NAKED LUNCH is it. Unfortunately, Cronenberg, like David Lynch, began to take himself so seriously that he started doing things just for the sake of being weird. And, like Lynch, he eventually began to parody himself.

Harriet Deltubbo Without question this is one of the grimmest films ever. Here's a story about a place most people might not be able to conceive: where things are dying, where people survive off liquor and candy, where those who are supposed to love us shove knives into our backs. It will bring you to tears and make you laugh. All characters are unhappy souls, surviving in a grim world. It's an amazing work and everything I had hoped for. From an artistic standpoint, there were some plot elements and character developments I didn't think were totally needed. They do however drive the story, which seemed to be their purpose, so I can accept them.