Movieo
Poster for The King of Marvin Gardens

The King of Marvin Gardens

1972 · 1h 43m · R Drama
Directed by Bob Rafelson

Seen it?

Overview

Jason Staebler lives on the Boardwalk and fronts for the local mob in Atlantic City. He is a dreamer who asks his brother David, a radio personality from Philadelphia, to help him build a paradise on a Pacific Island, which might be just another of his pie-in-the-sky schemes. Inevitably, complications begin to pile up.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
71%
Tomatometer
Rotten

Admirers of director Bob Rafelson's previous feature, Five Easy Pieces, will be stunned by the tedious pretensions of his newest effort.

Variety Staff, Variety
Fresh

The film is talky and often abrasive, but it sticks in the mind.

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Rotten

An odd, unsettling movie overall, vague in its characterisation and narrative, dotted with bewildering asides and lacking any real warmth or humour.

Tom Huddleston, Time Out
Fresh

Bob Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens is a perversely satisfying movie -- it works after going out of its way not to -- and a very eccentric one.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Rotten

Rafelson's kind of poetic realism, an accuracy in the treatment of unexpected settings, looked like quality to some in Five Easy Pieces two years back. Now it looks like the most pretentious of tired cliches.

Roger Greenspun, New York Times

Comments

Talk about the film with other members

More films