Is this a hangout picture or a heartfelt testimony? I’m not sure. However fortunate or unfortunate, it is entertaining at least.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 25, 2024

Plagues & Pleasures does a great job of presenting both the place and its problems, its delights and its curiosities.

| Jun 4, 2020

Plagues and Pleasures has a different style for a reason: It's a movie about the environment that isn't content with the good-bad dynamic of your average gloomy enviropic.

| Dec 19, 2019

Plagues & Pleasures is more than a cautionary tale about the dangers of messing with nature. It's about the rise and fall of a place, a classic story: think Camelot, or Rome, or maybe even planet Earth.

| Aug 23, 2017

Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea is funny and compassionate, but it shows us a future that could befall any American community that suddenly becomes economically unsound, or politically inconvenient.

| Sep 13, 2009

Narrated by John Waters, Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea is an odd bird -- wacky and poignant, funny and sobering, but this portrait of a forgotten paradise is a must-see.

| Sep 13, 2009

While the doc flounders as a coherent story of human folly, it's a cheeky travelmercial guaranteed to get the curious to make the road trip to this near-abandoned resort.

| Sep 13, 2009

a one-off kinda film that is worth seeing for its sheer jaw-drop factor

| Jan 18, 2008

It makes for a strange, but somewhat endearing, melange of the grim and comic.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 6, 2007

[A] thoroughly engrossing documentary.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 30, 2007

The movie is engaging for the way it documents the rise and fall of a semi-natural landmark, and especially for the way it shows how people still come to California to remake themselves.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 29, 2007

Funny, tragic, and informative Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea is an unforgettable portrait of a desert town turned into a sewer.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 28, 2007

Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea is an engaging, entertaining snapshot of a long, tragicomic moment in American history.

| Original Score: B- | Nov 28, 2007

Plagues and Pleasures is the best kind of short vacation; you get to lounge with some interesting people, plus you get to learn a little something about the local environment and what can be done to keep it going.

| Nov 14, 2007

Because of Metzler and Springer's appetite for raw experience, what could have been a depressing horror movie is wildly funny and enraging. It's the rare documentary with something for everyone.

Full Review | Nov 5, 2007

The documentary is informative and entertaining and gives you both sides of the great debate. You may not want to take a vacation to the Salton Sea, but you'll enjoy the visit there.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 4, 2007

Plagues and Pleasures is simultaneously fun and creepy, best appreciated by those who enjoy similar profiles of Detroit's crumbling grandeur.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 26, 2007

Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea can best be described as An Inconvenient Truth with a stronger sense of humor, a keen sense of the cost of neglect and with a cast of characters who'd make the residents of Twin Peaks seem mundane.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 8, 2007

If Divine were still alive today, he-she might well be wintering on the edge of The Salton Sea.

| Oct 3, 2007

The ridiculous and the sublime collide, with tragicomic results, in Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer's lively, fascinating chronicle of "Paradise Lost" in the Southern California desert.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 3, 2007