68
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80Time OutKeith UhlichTime OutKeith UhlichImagine if Frederick Wiseman and David Lynch had a bastard child, and you'll get a sense of the movie's off-kilter aesthetic, a potent and pointed mix of firsthand observation and surreal flights of fancy.
- 80New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNew York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierWhat the movie captures overall looks like a scene from a sci-fi, postapocalyptic nightmare.
- 70The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisThe New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisIn this visual caress of postindustrial blight, disintegration has never looked so gorgeous.
- 63Boston GlobeMark FeeneyBoston GlobeMark FeeneyThe title is an imagined word to describe a hard-to-imagine (but very real) place. Combine "Detroit" and "dystopia" (the opposite of utopia) and Detropia is what you get.
- 60Village VoiceVillage VoiceThe filmmakers pay elegy to the Detroit of the Motown era, with its thriving middle class supported by manufacturing. At the same time, they're honest about the fact that the version of Detroit local partisans yearn for is long gone and most likely not coming back.
- 50Slant MagazineJesse CataldoSlant MagazineJesse CataldoSeems to be looking for answers, but the ones it finds are too close to the surface to be satisfying.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeThe Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeMore impressionistic than enlightening, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Detropia introduces us to some interesting citizens of Detroit and gives them a welcome opportunity to speak for themselves, but reveals little we don't already know.
- 50VarietyDennis HarveyVarietyDennis HarveyAmong several recent documentaries about Detroit, the elegiac Detropia is perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing, if not the most informative or insightful.