Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

Really silly and yet oddly effective in its portrayal of anorexia. Worth watching just for the originality of the production.

Watching this on YouTube in some horrible bootleg quality gave it this really unsettling nightmare quality. Shocked how many Carpenter songs I know and love

Brilliant in an odd way. It's a shame it's not widely available.

The way Haynes makes us care for Barbie dolls is nothing short of masterful. Geniously inventive documentary.

Weird at how effective this is when it is a preposterous idea at the outset.

Anorexia Nervosa is....inventive, yet didactic.

The hokey parodies of documentary films and 70's pop psychology seemed annoying at first, but in the long run they probably helped to humanize these inhuman set pieces. The treatment of the Barbie doll as actor gimmick in this film goes so far beyond mere restraint -- and yet never dives fully headfirst into pure kitsch -- that it almost has to be seen to be believed.

A sincere effort with some powerful moments, but on the whole it left me somewhat underwhelmed - and convinced that if it weren't legally unavailable, it would have far less of a reputation.

Perfect dolls and perfect music showing an imperfect story. Watch the 'trailer'

"i guess i'm just beginning to realise that it isn't something good."

despite or perhaps because of how incredibly strange it is, it manages to be a touching portrait of Karen Carpenter

I found it silly at points when it wasn't trying to be... though, I can see why people would like this.

Almost too campy to stomach, but hilarious and oddly moving in its own way.

A truly singular combination of biopic, experimental film, social critique, cautionary tale, documentary, and even musical. It's a heady mixture that sets this film far apart from most of its ilk. The idea to have Karen and her peers portrayed by Barbie dolls is brilliant on at least a couple of levels, and the grotesque manner in which Haynes chips away at her appearance surprisingly effective at demonstrating the horrors of anorexia.

Haynes reappropriates the boilerplate made-for-TV biopic, Barbie dolls, the Holocaust, the suburbs, 50s kitsch and cheesy 70s pop music into a tragic, utterly moving critique of the pressures society places on women, the vicious nature of fame and American consumer culture at large. In some ways, it's the best of what Haynes accomplishes in his wonderful later films rolled into a stunning 43-minute opus, yet unique enough to completely stand on its own. A masterpiece of cinematic construction.

A good short film. While it does make the sympathy derive from the terrible behaviour of the Carpenter family - which lessens the tragedy a little - it's a very well-edited and disturbing piece, which says a lot for a film made with Barbie dolls. Very campy but very good - and affecting.

The actors are kinda stiff.

To call a Todd Haynes film "gimmicky" is almost redundant. The strength of this film is that he uses the gimmick toward creating genuine pathos as well as an interesting juxtaposition of The Carpenter's and the loss of innocence of America in the 1970s (also helping to underscore the complexly ironic sadness of their music).

Ugly wish-fulfillment fantasy for gay people who delight in the agony of clean-living middle-class heterosexual folks. Sort of how normal people watch offal like "Dallas" or "Dynasty" to watch rich people suffer

Bratz couldn't have done this better.

Exploring the life of Karen Carpenter, and more importantly (and interestingly) the issue of anorexia, with all the characters played by barbie dolls. Ranks as one of the more ludicrous ideas I've heard for a film yet the end result is surprisingly effective and makes for a dark and haunting look at eating disorders.

Unevenly switches between student art film and one of those silly educational videos you saw in high school on a crummy VHS which made your heart lift when you saw the TV being wheeled into the classroom and you get to waste even more class time by having to find the right cords to plug in and carefully resuscitating the tape to make it play with any flickering pictures or wobbly sounds. But that nostalgia doesn't do much to stop this cheesy film not achieve the seriousness and education it need

Ick.

The use of Barbie dolls was brilliant and I can't imagine the film being anywhere near as effective with live actors. The human tragedy combined with top notch experimental filmmaking. Well worth the 45 minutes.

It finally occurred to me that I could just go find this on YouTube and thwart Richard Carpenter's cease-and-desist ruling. The version I saw was super grainy but the central conceit works amazingly well and I was suprisingly moved by the ending. The sound collage of Karen's voice on several Carpenters tracks that appears a few times was remarkably haunting.

Hilarious yet honest and touching at times, this film was one of the first films I remember hearing about being illegal. This of course only added to it's cult appeal.