Rating: 
Summary: NAKED NAUSEA
Review: The fertile imagination of veteran debauchee William Burroughs is here exposed to the utmost extreme by director David Cronenberg. It's about a bug exterminator who gets addicted to the roach poison. He starts to hallucinate and what he sees is so gut-wrenchingly nauseating, it makes you pale: giant roaches that speak from fleshy holes in their abdomens, an alien with fleshy tubes that oozes addictive milky substances into a cup, typewriters that turn into bugs and other assorted "lunch." All these critters have one purpose: to persaude the author that his wife is actually a secret agent and must be killed. This he does in a "William Tell" fashion, aiming at a glass pitched on top of her head. He misses and she goes down. Bye bye Joanie. I like Burroughs' writing, especially Junky & Queer, but this is just too much. Technically very good, the movie has some truly sickening and potentially psyche-damaging scenes. If you have a sensitive disposition, give this one a miss.
Rating: 
Summary: "It's time to do our Wiiliam Tell Act"
Review: Talking slithering strangely sexual typewriters, addicts of cockroach-exterminating pyretheum powder (who like to breath on cbugs and watch them die while on it), thick-fluid sipping mugwhump creatures, an assortment of strange parasitic characters to represent the sinister parts of you you never knew ere there, and a high as a kite protagonist to narrate it all. What more can I say? This is both a brilliant representation of William S. Burrough's no-holds-barred dark imagination and director Cronenburg's as well, both with the twisted audascity to take all these horrific atroscities of reality and fantasy and breath eroticism & mystery into them...Impossible to describe or even explain (almost but not quite as incomprehensible as FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS), the movie is not exactly a telling of the book Naked Lunch (even though some characters, namely the vile mugwhumps, show up) as it is a telling of Burroughs writing the book and what he may have imagined while writing it. THe film starts out with the main character William Lee and his even more "creepy" (if anyone in the Burroughs line ever wanted to label what's inside themselves) wife, Joan, are addicted to the roach powder pyretheum, which Lee obtains thru his job as an exterminator. After playing a drunken William Tell act with his wife and blowing her head off so to say (which actually happened to Burroughs and his wife, and is said to have sparked the writing of Naked Lunch), he escapes to Tangiers, Mexico (with a "ticket" which actually appears to be a syringe). There he flows into a seemingly hallucinatory Interzone--a place populated by all the things mentioned above and tons more weirdness. He also meets the wife of a bisexual author who looks almost identical to his wife...and they engage in a particularly freaky sexual practice in which a typewriter tries to join in. If I say any more, the plot will be totally given away, so just watch, and compared to all the elaborate twists and turns on this unreal path to hell, I've said very little. Great performances from Roy Sheider (who plays Dr. Benway, another character direct from the book), Paul Weller as Lee, Judy Davis as Joan and the other Joan, and Robert A. Silverman as a truly unique black centipede meat salesman with a disquieting manor (the black centipede meat, as well as Burroughs' thoughts on how centipedes controlled many Interzone lives, were from the novel). You'll either be completely confused or completely tripped out of yr. mind, but you won't leave the film unchanged...just like Burroughs' writings.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Wierd???
Review: I have to admit...I got lost watching this one. This movie sounded as though it had great potiential. I found myself sitting in my easy chair trying to figure out what was exactly going on during the first 30 minutes of the film. For some reason I just could not compute with this movie. I'm a big fan of Director Cronenberg and actor Peter Weller, but I simply had to give up watching this tape.
Rating:
Summary: VISUAL FEAST, INTELLIGENT, A MIND-BLOWER!
Review: I hope it will not be long before this film is transferred to DVD as it would be wonderful if Mr. Cronenberg can give us all some background on the making of his one true masterpiece. This is perfect for those of us who like our sci-fi grounded to a literary classic. Those viewers who criticize a brave effort for not being literally true to its source material HAVE NO IMAGINATION! IT'S A MOVIE FER CRISSAKES! IF YOU WANTED THE BOOK THAN...READ IT AGAIN! No, this adaptation will not please everyone because it may take a few viewings to connect the dots but that's all the more reason to see it twice or three times. It's very atmospheric of the '50s Beat Gen with Ornette Coleman blowing a special sound track sax, excellent vignettes of Burroughs' book and real life intertwined and those CREATURES! It's great to watch with a buzz on too. But enough of the fun...this is entertaining CINEMA, NOT A BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: An great guidebook and companion piece to original living!
Review: What can I say about this film? "Serious" Burroughs fans tend to exercise their credentials by panning it, more often than not, while serious fans of Mr. Cronenberg's work are totally rewarded for their willingness to follow him on his seamless hallucinogenic visions. So who is right? The film fans, of course. Naked Lunch, the "novel," is not filmable in any sense of the word. There is no way any screen adaptation could ever meet the work's fans expectations or private interpretations. So the film should be judged on its own merits, as an audio-visual presentation (much as Apocalypse Now! is not to be narrowly considered as an adaptation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness). As a work standing on its own is how this picture truly shines, of course. As the beautiful 1950's period-piece titles float over Ornette Coleman's wonderful score, you know you are in for a treat. Like Sting's chuckle at the beginning of "Roxanne," it is an effortless expression that this one is going to be great, so relax. The characters are wonderfully stylised icons of 50's artistic bohemian life. Struggling to get by, pursuing their writing and their personal proclivities without concern for mass acceptance (or even legality), trying to cope on the fly with the chaos bred by the passions that unravel and disorganise their lives, they each exude at their core a powerful need to be themselves. We hop on this ride as "flies on the wall" (sorry, I really could not help that!) observing one William Lee (Peter Weller), at a point where he has fooled himself into thinking that he is leading a nice, normal life. He has a wife, Joan (Judy Davis), and a steady job catering to New York City's happiest inhabitants, the ever-present insect population. But nothing stays simple for Lee for long. He follows Joan in her development of a taste for the intravenous consumption of his bug powder, until the supply dries up. In his attempts to figure out a way to "kick," or at least survive withdrawal painlessly, a mysterious Dr. Benway provides him with a substitute that will make him "lose his taste for the bug powder all together." At this point more chaos enters his life in the form of his accidental shooting of his wife. On the run from the law for drug use and probably murder, he travels far, far, away to a place we know as Interzone, which while styled as a "notorious free port on the coast of North Africa," retains a remarkable similarity to the New York underbelly in which he already lives - to the point where his concerned friends ("just finish your book, Bill, then come back to us") are only a bus ride away. He is quite obviously also on the run from himself, as well. His writings, his hallucinogenic "reports" on his trip, are what are to become his book, Naked Lunch, although he denies all knowledge of its creation ("nothing that a reasonably well organised cabal could not put together," probably misquoted at this point). Lee spends an indeterminate time in Interzone, wrestling with his drug use, which has moved on to the "true black meat of the Brazilian aquatic centipede," his sexuality ("homosexuality is the best all around cover an agent can have"), and his writing - wrought highly visible in this incredible film by the series of typewriters with personalities, needs, and benefits all of their own. He ultimately seems to be on his way to escaping his Interzone, with the recently liberated Joan Frost (also played by Judy Davis), for the neighboring Ataxia (sp.?) but as he is being accosted at the border and asked to prove that he is a writer... the film loops in on itself and once more, he finds himself inexorably writing the same story. He can run and hide behind the fog of drugs, sexual escapism and outrageousness, and over the edge writing, but he cannot escape the realities of his life. In this film the attempt to live in one's own created reality is examined so realistically you almost forget that the lead character is hallucinating most of the time. The recreational pharmaceuticals, the sexual experimentation, and the drive to create are limned in an incredibly clear and valid way - as is their downside, the pitfalls inherent in experimenting on oneself against the narrow confines of "conventional wisdom." It is an excellent guidebook and companion piece to anyone struggling with issues such as these in their own life...
Rating: 
Summary: the peak of Cronenbergian weirdness
Review: David Cronenberg, one of the last surviving geniuses in the modern film industry, has always made uncompromising, nightmarish films enmeshed with meanings and messages that lie under the celluloid surface, waiting to be dissected. As a filmmaker, he relies (to a certain degree) on the audience's imagination to be at work once the end credits are done rolling, and his adaptation of William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" is no exception. While it should be made clear that the movie (according to other reviewers) is more of a document of the events leading up to the novel's publication rather than a flat-out adaptation, Cronenberg does a brilliant job capturing the sheer hallucinatory tone of the author's scatterbrained prose. From the darkly comic image of mutated insects talking through their scphincters, cannibalistic typewriters, and the accurate, amazing creation of Mugwumps, it's clear that most of "Naked Lunch" is Cronenberg's film (not to disrespect Burroughs, of course). The story begins in New York, where William Lee (an appropriately deadpan Peter Weller), an exterminator, and his wife Joan (Judy Davis) are building a steady tolerance to bug powder (cooked and shot up like heroin, of course); when a shooting accident puts Lee on the lam, he winds up in Interzone and is drafted as an agent. Needless to say, Cronenberg employs this simple, back-lot setting as an atmosphere to create some of his most audacious, hallucinatory imagery to date (including a typewriter that sprouts sexual organs and an aristocrat who mutates into a beetle). He also uses deliberate lighting effects to display a character's narcotic-aided state, usually zeroing in on the eyes (very well-done). Like the novel on which it's based, "Naked Lunch" truly relies on the viewer's willingness to be sucked into the story without any guarantee that a sensible, "perfect" end will be reached. Fans of Cronenberg (or even David Lynch, for that matter) will know what to expect, while the more casual filmgoer may want to tread more lightly. That being said, I must admit this is probably the director's most easily accessible film, second only to his ultra-mainstream, FX-laden remake of "The Fly." The performances are great, attaining a sweet level of oddness that at least matches the novel's nothing's-shocking delirium. Weller and Davis are excellent, cast very much against type here; Ian Holm & Julian Sands, as two eccentrics subject to their own strange behaviors, showcase an ominous normality; and Robert A. Silverman (who also appeared in Cronenberg's "Scanners" & "eXistenZ")--as a scary little man with a strange accent--is amazingly comic with his ill-timed, inappropriate laugh. "Naked Lunch" is a fitting epitaph for Burroughs, and simply one of the best films David Cronenberg has made to date. Lay down your reservations and give this film a chance, you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: seems to be trying too hard
Review: Although this film is not at all a direct adaption of Burrough's novel, I can't help but compare the two, only because i really enjoyed the novel but had trouble sitting through the film. I think that there are several elements in the book (and in Burrough's work in general) that are lacking in the film that can account for my dislike of "Naked Lunch the movie". First of all, the novel is written in what can be described as cartoon skits, albeit disturbing "cartoons." However, while the novel is cartoonish and in constant motion, the film moves slowly with humans and scenes that are, well, all-too-human (even William Lee's cockroach typewriter). Secondly, the book is funny. The film, on the other hand, lacked the outrageous comedy of the novel and the outrageous atmosphere in general; the novel gives the impression of a mad-romp into hell, the film is more like a burdened walk. Overall, i found this movie to be slow without sufficient elements to hold my attention. Unlike, for example, Bukowski's "Barfly", which is wonderfuly honest and brutal, "Naked Lunch" comes off as pressing the issue, as trying too hard, and ultimately fails to accomplish whatever it was trying too hard to do.
Rating:
Summary: the work of Howard Shore
Review: I loved this film when I first saw it. I am disappointed that it is not available on DVD. There are a number of decent reviews here. Oddly, none of them mentioned the soundtrack. Howard Shore put together a work that I can compare to no other. The soundtrack features Ornette Coleman. It is a perfect match for the film. Haunting, mysterious, emotional. Coleman is superb. The soundtrack did not come out of my CD player for months.
Rating:
Summary: EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT
Review: This is often misviewd as an adaption of the book, but its much more an examination of what created burroughs as a writer. The repetition of the shooting of burroughs wife is very significant... it is all based around the introduction to "queer" qwhere burroughs says that if he hadnt shot joan then he would never have become a writer... therefor to enter annexia, i. e. to continue as a writer on the next stage of his journey, he has to kill his wife again. hint of fatalism to the whole shebang. superb dialogue and more a missmass of many burroughs peices and imagery, and not necersarrily all drug hallucination... but reality merging with fantasy, we have a stark little nightmare tale that is a true joy... this is part biography, part adaptation, part true cronenberg thru and thru... probably his best fim, certainly ranks with videodrome... enjoy your lunch...
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't hold a candle
Review: This film cannot hold a candle to Burroughs' literary masterpiece. Admitedly, I had high hopes, but I really wasn't expecting it to be this far off the mark. The film misses some of the most crucial and intense social commentaries that Burroughs weaved into his novel. While it would be hard to reproduce a cut-up on the big screen, I felt like too much time was spent on the superficial physical oddities and it seemed as though there was an attempt to make the story linear when it really isn't. It's a decent attempt, but just doesn't capture the depth of what Burroughs was writing about.
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