Though this clash of picket-fenced, down-home values and big city oafishness was handled with a little more delicacy in 2005’s superb ‘Junebug’, Buscemi’s film has lots to say about this fruitful dynamic.
Comment
04/11/08
Lonesome Jim (2006)
59
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:87
Fresh:51
Rotten:36
Average Rating:6/10
Consensus: Though Lonesome Jim is leavened by sweet, understated humor, it's hard to root for such a morose, self-defeating protagonist.
Synopsis: With LONESOME JIM, director Steve Buscemi delivers another low-budget gem about small-town American life. Boasting a fresh script courtesy of James C. Strouse, the film begins when 27-year-old Jim... [More]
Starring: Casey Affleck, Liv Tyler, Mary Kay Place, Seymour Cassel
Director: Steve Buscemi
Reviews for Lonesome Jim
Place [has] played overly chirpy, middle-class mothers/wives before, but the mom here is slowly revealed, through the subtlest changes of expression, to be much more than a caricature.
03/31/06
"Lonesome Jim" is worth checking out, if nothing else for the performances and Buscemi's idiosyncratic sense of irony.
05/26/06
A slight, but amusing and occasionally touching, dark comedy about depression and dysfunction that percolates with indie film hipness.
04/20/06
Jim's characters may grow on you after a slow setup and, like a hot plate of grits, may stick with you.
04/07/06
In the end, Lonesome Jim is an enormously hopeful and, I think, realistic film.
04/13/06
Has great relevance to the lost adultolescent generation of today ... but it also flounders in its commonplace and too-familiar concept.
09/17/07
"Lonesome Jim" is an earnest and modest 'little independent' movie that charms by way of its understated underachieving characters.
04/20/09
It is packed with delightfully silly vignettes that had me squirming in my seat with laughter.
04/13/06
Refreshingly, there’s more lethargy than awakening here...
02/09/06
If you were to saddle Garden State with a far less likeable lead and set it in Indiana, you might end up with this small gem
04/20/05
A simple, no frills story-line told with total deadpan humor that fits in perfectly with the downward spiral of Jim's life.
04/02/05
There is a sweetness, eventually, under the detached comedy of this funny, uneven film.
04/02/05
Lonesome Jim is not going to become a generation’s anything the way Garden State is evolving, but it’s a decent sidebar
02/10/05
Too many movies offer cardboard cutouts of even their primaries, but Jim delivers honest, three-dimensional portraits of each of the major players.
05/19/06
Anchored by dry humor and purposefully understated performances, Lonesome Jim steadily builds in charm as it progresses.
04/02/05
Slight, deadpan, mild and understated, but enjoyable in a quiet, almost throwaway fashion.
04/05/06
Focuses in on a mother-son connection, rarely explored in films, after a depressed young man returns home to Indiana to start his life over again.
03/24/06
If viewers can just get in synch with the movie's low energy and decidedly minor key, there are many pleasures to be had here, not the least of which is Affleck's affecting, unadorned performance.
03/24/06
Buscemi's prior films (Trees Lounge, Animal Factory) displayed a keen eye for detail, and that is evident everywhere here.
03/31/06
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