105 minute running time but felt like an eternity, this was a terrible movie … just pretty boys (River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves) pretending to my young male prostitutes … how grim and depressing can you get? Gus Van Sant may have thought he was making capital A.R.T. art but it’s just crap.

Dick Schickel the rare honest critic back in the day: “There's more drama, and comedy, in the reviews of critics who committed themselves to Van Sant's anti-Establishment genius after Cowboy and | are trying to justify their enthusiasm now.“