Wonderful character development!

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This film is not only entertaining, but has a powerful current message about how Americans who live on the fringe of society (i.e. choose alternate socio-economic lifestyles) are mistreated by those who have chosen to fall in line with how most people do things. Hushpuppy is delightful, and the filming is done in such a way that the viewer is almost convinced that a documentary is being watched instead of a scripted film. Don't miss this one if you love people, the Deep South, the Mississippi River Delta, fringe societies, or some or all of these. I was raised in New Orleans and surrounds, so this one has a special place in my heart.

What would it be like to live in the middle of a swamp, in a post Katrina or post apocalyptic world? What if you saw this world from the imagination/reality of a child. That's where I arrived when I opened my eyes to the film, Beast of the Southern Wild. The film opens in a celebration with the people of the "Bathtub", a community living in the middle of the Mississippi delta, inside of a levee. This community is a hodgepodge of races, cultures, the eclectic, and the strange. The narrator of this unusual story is Hushpuppy, a tough, spunky, and independent six year old girl, who is raised by her equally tough but slightly off father, Wink.As I watched this film, I couldn't tell where realty crossed to fantasy or when fantasy reawakened again to reality. In between listening to the heartbeat of every animal she came upon, or hand fishing with her father, Hushpuppy envisioned the escape of prehistoric beasts, released from melting polar ice caps. For her, the universe had to always be in balance, and the escape of these beasts represented just that. The film moved as it were visual poetry, weaving in and out of realism and the fantastic mind of a child. I wonder if adults would have the flexibility to still absorb or understand the idealism of such an imagination.For a first time effort, director and writer Benh Zeitlin runs full blast into a visually stunning, epic, and artistic piece. It's also hard to believe that the stars of the film, Dwight Henry(Wink) , and the truly amazing Quvenzhané Wallis(Hushpuppy) were just regular people discovered in Louisiana. This film will either disappoint with its confusion, entrance you with its artistry, or leave you longing to understand its meaning. But whatever you take from this film, I hope that you would appreciate the remarkable talent of Quvenzhané Wallis, in a performance that I hope will be awarded come Oscar time.

I watched The Beasts of the Southern Wild with my wife, and if she hadn't been with me, I would have walked out. While the acting and cinematography are pretty good, the story – if there is a story – was frankly, rubbish. I know my lack of understanding was partly due to my extreme difficulty in understanding a young girl speaking in a squeaky voice with a broad Louisiana dialect, but even if I had understood every single word, I doubt whether my opinion would have changed very much.The movie drifts from reality to fantasy at the drop of hat, and for the most part, I have no idea which was which – as even the reality was more or less a fantasy. I confess I knew next to nothing about this movie before I sat down to watch it, which is unusual for me, as normally I like to research a film's subject matter ahead of viewing. So I admit this did not help my enjoyment - as the film was unremittingly grim and depressing -I think! I don't believe there was a single second of humour in its entire length. To make matters worse, I now find that all the major film critics unanimously have raved about this film, giving it their top star rating and generally drooling over every unfathomable aspect of it.I was beginning to think that either I had lost it, or that I watched the wrong movie, when I happened to chance upon a piece by Vince Mancini entitled, 'The Case against Beasts of the Southern Wild'.Phew! Thank God I'm not the only one out here in movie audience-land that thinks that the movie was basically a load of old rubbish.Here are a few choice snippets from Mr Mancini's lengthy and erudite piece."As a critic….. making sure the films you champion are worthy, to keep from burning your audience and becoming the boy who 'cried wolf', making film critics even more irrelevant than we already are…""… Beasts of the Southern Wild is a critic-bait film …""….this tale of deep south swamp hobos and feral children that eat cat food has all the depth of one of those Levis slam poetry commercials. I thought we weren't supposed to fall for the Magic Negro and the Noble Savage any more Yet here it is, a whole movie full of them, plus folksy Cajuns who can't open their mouths without homespun crypticisms aw shucksing their way out….""… it's more like someone using poetry to obfuscate a story that wouldn't work as prose, because there just isn't much there. A lot of swamp-jazz hocus pocus and gumbo mumbo jumbo, so to speak…"There is much, much more, but I would imagine that the above is sufficient for you to get the general idea. There is a movie-God out there somewhere. I am not alone in wanting my movies to make some kind of sense, or in some way uplift me, excite me, shock me, amuse me, titillate me or provoke me. This movie did nothing except puzzle me.

Many reviewers have pointed out how truly unique this film is. And it is. Yet there will be quite a few bells ringing if you are an experienced enough movie goer. The director Luis Bunuel would love this film, with it's surreal dialogs and depiction of dirt, muck and various crustaceans milling about and being eaten. The bourgeois were disgusted by all this before WWII and from many reviews of this film it's obvious they still are. I stress the surrealist connection here because it seems to have evaded other reviewers completely. Do yourself a favor and see the films of Bunuel. Back to BotSW, in the mind of the 6-year old Hushpuppy his father's fatal illness, a Katrina-like storm and flood and a planetary climate catastrophe all bind and fold together. Her daddy like other adults in the film live off the grid, evading the law and authorities of any kind in the swamp. There is the feel of a post-apocalypse back- to-low-tech fantasy, except that here all is seen by the eyes of a child AND it's arguably pre-apocalypse or a slow ongoing apocalypse. A kid's Mad Max experience if you like. Cinematography drives this film so it is surprising that it is based on screenwriter Lucy Alibar's own theatrical play. What a versatile author. Admittedly too much hand-held camera-work there, perhaps to point out that there is no longer firm ground after the flood. There is a lot, and I mean a lot of local South Louisiana color. Some of it is pleasant, some repulsive. Joy and horror. Big Chief Al Doucette of Treme fame makes a cameo appearance. There is a most unusual take on the ancient Viking burial rite in the end, just when I thought nothing could surprise me anymore in this film. Yes it has flaws, all well documented here, so 7 out of 10, but the film is an obvious labor of love. The filming process must have been really laborious, everybody literally getting their feet wet, and I for one really respect that.