Release and Critical Reception
The film, produced by Tani L. Cohen and Chuck Grieve, debuted at the Toronto Film Festival on September 12, 1992, and was released to a very limited number of theaters in the United States in 1993. Donovan was nominated as best supporting male at the 1994 Independent Spirit Awards; the film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize (dramatic) at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released in 1994 on VHS and in 1995 on Laserdisc; it was finally released on DVD on February 6, 2007.
The film was generally well received by critics. Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle gave the film three stars, stating "These actors all create riveting snapshots of oddballs in action," but also noting the film has a "rambling storyline".1 These same characteristics that were praised in positive reviews were the same ones panned in negative ones, such as Desson Howe of The Washington Post who states: "After the characters have taken up most of the movie airing their idiosyncrasies, they undergo melodramatic fates that reveal little more than Antin's recession of an imagination." 2
The film did however cause a rift between real life brothers Steve Antin and Jonathon Antin as Jonathon was insulted over the film's close resemblance to their own family and how the character Brent Zetterland was depicted as vapid, vain, oafish and slow. However it is rumored that the two have since reconciled.
Read more about this topic: Inside Monkey Zetterland
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release, critical and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“You took my heart in your hand
With a friendly smile,
With a critical eye you scanned,
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And said: It is still unripe,
Better wait awhile;”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)