There are lots of interesting tidbits here, but I can't help but feel that the real meat of the story has yet to be explored.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 7, 2019

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Certainly, the sex was exciting, as well as controversial. But Plato's Retreat also represented an effort to think through the mores behind monogamy, to challenge assumptions and imagine an alternative.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 7, 2009

A scary reminder of the potentially-disastrous physical and emotional consequences of indiscriminate mating.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 6, 2009

The pearls of wisdom are best extracted from the minds of those who stood on the front line, people who walked into the seminal fluid line of fire and lived to tell the tale.

| Original Score: B | Apr 6, 2009

The film treats Levenson's rapid descent as if someone had turned on the lights at a sex party: scurrying away with pity and irritation that the good times had to end.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 3, 2009

There's glossy surface engagement as an artifact snapshot of the sexual revolution, but everything about American Swing is only thumbnail-deep; it doesn't have, ahem, the rigorous thrust necessary to leave a lasting impression.

| Original Score: C- | Mar 31, 2009

A poorly-done documentary that manages to make the phenomenon of swinging boring.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 31, 2009

An essential document to the rich history of New York, "American Swing" is too short sighted for the vision of its controversial subject.

| Original Score: C+ | Mar 29, 2009

American Swing doesn't have a particularly well-defined point of view, but it is a succinct, entertaining and valuable record of a time that in some ways now seems as remote as the Roaring '20s.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 27, 2009

A lively and moderately engaging documentary, but its lack of thorough explorations leave you feeling slightly empty, underwhelmed and yearning for more insights.

| Original Score: 6.0/10 | Mar 27, 2009

Although American Swing pointedly goes out of its way to include positive testimonials from several women who patronized the club, it leaves you feeling queasy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 27, 2009

American Swing is an entertaining, oddly affectionate portrait of Plato's Retreat's Larry Levenson, and a brash, grainy, warts%u2013and-all Polaroid of an era of sexual history.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2009

Interesting and concise documentary about the positive and destructive effects of casual sex.

| Original Score: B | Mar 26, 2009

Directors Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman don't delve deeply enough into the psyche of club founder Larry Levenson or the culture he exploited. But they do present an entertaining snapshot of his brief reign as New York's self-appointed King of Swing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2009

American Swing could use the flair of similar portraits of disco-era debauchery like Boogie Nights or Inside Deep Throat, but it's even-handed in capturing the operation's ambition and hubris. Just don't bring an appetite.

| Original Score: B | Mar 26, 2009

Repetitive, narratively fractured, and padded with more hardcore inserts than hardcore facts, this amateurish documentary about the disco-era Manhattan sex club Plato's Retreat skimps on context and basic information. It's a fan site on celluloid.

| Mar 26, 2009

A shrewdly made documentary about the rise and fall of Plato's Retreat, the infamous Manhattan sex club of the '70s and '80s.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 25, 2009

Though sweetly reminding us that some outer-borough suburbanites did find liberation at Plato's, the film tries -- and fails -- to swing both ways, nostalgically glorifying its subject only to smugly revel in Levenson's ignominious demise.

| Mar 24, 2009

The filmmakers never adequately confront the complex nature of the iconic locale.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 24, 2009