Director Yann Demange ('71) seems uncertain whether to play the material as searing drama or black comedy, and so he gives up on establishing a recognizable tone altogether.

| Mar 4, 2020

When you ask yourself: "What's so special about Rick?" The answer is: not much.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 9, 2018

The music choices inject energy, but it's difficult to care about a character who is too dumb to care about himself.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 9, 2018

I could feel the grit under its fingernails... I quite liked it.

| Dec 8, 2018

There's an honesty to the hardscrabble family portrait that makes it worthwhile.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 7, 2018

The issue is not that the film focuses on a white kid, but that it doesn't seem much interested in the black lives hit disproportionately hard by the war on drugs.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 7, 2018

Mostly good fun with some bold performances.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 7, 2018

Yet roughing up his pretty-boy looks and playing people destined for defeat rather than Hollywood endings has become a cliché for McConaughey.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 7, 2018

Thought-provoking points about racial injustice are raised, only to be sketched over by the script. Still, where White Boy Rick hooks you in is as a family drama.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2018

A patchy follow-up to the searing '71 from director Yann Demange, but one which tells a compelling true story and offers a treat of a supporting turn from Matthew McConaughey.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 3, 2018

What at first appears to be a solid, albeit conventional, rise-then-fall story of a cocky young FBI informant soon morphs into something far more moving and thoughtful.

| Oct 8, 2018

I can think of no reason any bright, witty or halfway sophisticated movie lover-or otherwise normal person-would want to spend 10 minutes with any of the criminal degenerates in this worthless load of crap.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Sep 18, 2018

There are so many stories to tell about unfortunate people who get arrested and imprisoned for selling drugs. So why-oh-why did anyone think this real-life tale about a white 15-year-old drug dealer in 1980s Detroit was the one worth revealing?

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 18, 2018

There's something strangely uninvolving about White Boy Rick, despite all its claims to be a sensational true story.

| Sep 18, 2018

A lot of deals go down, and go bad, in White Boy Rick, but the one that really goes awry is the one with the audience.

| Sep 14, 2018

It gives the audience a seriocomic rush. The filmmakers never figure out a full and satisfying ending for a real-life story that culminates in a paralyzing injustice. But if the climactic shocks are just sketched in, the others are vivid and alive.

| Sep 14, 2018

It's a tale of right and wrong, greed, power and corruption. This telling gets a lot of the details right, but pulling away, the bigger picture is left rather blurred.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 14, 2018

McConaughey is so good and emotionally affecting as Richard Sr., in both vulnerable and tough moments, that it might even catch you off guard.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 14, 2018

Vivid, punchy...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 14, 2018

Watching this young man's life fall apart because of his destructive community and family is harrowing.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 13, 2018