The Flick
82

The Flick NYC Reviews and Tickets

82%
(91 Ratings)
Positive
83%
Mixed
9%
Negative
8%
Members say
Great acting, Absorbing, Great writing, Slow, Original

About the Show

Annie Baker's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the tiny battles and not-so-tiny heartbreaks of three underpaid ushers in a run-down movie palace.

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Show-Score Member Reviews (91)

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139 Reviews | 75 Followers
100
Slow, Thought-provoking, Resonant, Original, Intelligent

See it if You can tolerate a script that moves at the speed of life; maybe you meditate? And you are interested in real people with current problems

Don't see it if you can't physically sustain a very long play (try the matinee)

52 Reviews | 12 Followers
100
Thought-provoking, Riveting, Relevant, Profound, Must see

See it if You love amazing acting

Don't see it if You are bored with character driven theater

137 Reviews | 122 Followers
100
Enchanting, Masterful, Great writing, Intelligent, Profound

See it if You care intensely about the nuance and quality of the scriptwriting

Don't see it if You need a fast moving plot or don't like long awkward pauses

186 Reviews | 25 Followers
100
Absorbing, Quirky, Original, Must see, Great writing

See it if Like real time minimalist plays. The state of living in America today.

Don't see it if Dislike the above

60 Reviews | 22 Followers
100
Absorbing, Enchanting, Great staging, Great acting, Great writing

See it if you want the best show I've seen in a long time. Gorgeous writing about everyday human beings lovingly directed and beautifully acted.

Don't see it if stillness in the theatre baffles you. If you can't identify with comic and not so comic struggles of heroic people in minimum wage jobs

97 Reviews | 44 Followers
100
Absorbing, Great acting, Great staging, Great writing, Intelligent

See it if you're a serious theater-goer and student of human behavior.

Don't see it if your major reason for going to the theater is to sit back and be entertained.

54 Reviews | 15 Followers
99
Absorbing, Entertaining, Funny, Great acting, Clever

See it if You want to see a truly modern American play with universal themes.

Don't see it if You do not like long plays.

112 Reviews | 36 Followers
97
Absorbing, Great writing, Great acting, Masterful, Intelligent

See it if you love people dealing with very ordinary situations and naturalistic acting

Don't see it if you want a true plot line or the thought of sitting through a 3 hour play doesn't appeal to you

Critic Reviews (30)

The New York Times
May 19th, 2015

"A work of art so strange and fresh that it definitely freaks people out...There’s nothing radical about the language or the story, nor anything visibly avant-garde to shock the sensibility...In ways subtle and smart, it glancingly addresses issues of class and race, of who gets ahead and who gets left behind, and why. And while its style might be called micro-naturalism, or naturalism on steroids, there’s much art in Ms. Baker’s construction and a large vision behind the play’s concept."
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Time Out New York
May 20th, 2015

"Despite its length and aura of depressive inertia, 'The Flick' is a curiously light play about a shadowy topic: the difficulty of telling real life from projections—cinematic and the kind we put on each other...'The Flick' remains an extraordinarily engrossing, funny, weird, sweet and just plain concrete experience... Likewise, the acting has grown richer and keener, studies in longing and detachment that retain a teasing inscrutability."
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Deadline
May 18th, 2015

"I’m strongly urging everyone I know to see it. Which will surely strike them as odd, because the first time around, I said it was about the worst play I’d ever seen, 3-plus hours of torture. Guess what? I was wrong...On second viewing, I found myself completely drawn into the private worlds and fumbled intersections of these three ordinary lives. Somewhere in the long spaces between words fitfully spoken are acutely and empathically observed people whose problems by the end I really got in to."
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Variety
May 18th, 2015

"Annie Baker’s excruciatingly funny 2013 play, 'The Flick,' is back on the boards, none the worse for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama...Helmer Sam Gold recreates his hyper-naturalistic take on the material for this 16-week limited engagement, in a brilliantly engineered production that features the original, dead-perfect cast of four."
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The Hollywood Reporter
May 18th, 2015

"There are times when 'The Flick' feels undeniably and willfully self-indulgent...The play could probably have made the same points at far less length. But then we would have been deprived of the opportunity of spending so much time with these characters, who by the evening's end have thoroughly burrowed under our skin."
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New York Post
May 19th, 2015

"'The Flick' won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but it wasn’t a home run for Playwrights Horizons: Some subscribers were so annoyed by the actionless, leisurely pacing that artistic director Tim Sanford felt compelled to respond with a letter...Now 'The Flick' is back, and at a commercial house, too. Just make sure you get the extra-large pack of Twizzlers."
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Entertainment Weekly
May 18th, 2015

"Annie Baker’s moving, magnificent workplace comedy...'The Flick' is flawed, but in the way that all epic, idea-filled, great plays are. It’s overlong. So’s 'King Lear.' It’s repetitive. So is 'Long Day’s Journey Into Night.' More than anything, 'The Flick' is a masterpiece of tone. Baker knows that the greatest American dramas about how we live now rarely arrive at the party all dressed up as important works of art. We’d all be wiser for giving them a minute—or even 180 minutes—of our time."
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AM New York
May 18th, 2015

"Many (myself included) became strangely transfixed by the play's gentle texture, compassionate point of view, close-up realism and complex characters, as portrayed by an excellent four-member cast under Sam Gold's focused direction...There's no denying that 'The Flick' requires a good deal of patience from its audience. But by the end, after three hours and fifteen minutes, I was so hooked that I could have lingered even longer."
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