69
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91The PlaylistRodrigo PerezThe PlaylistRodrigo PerezAn absorbing office saga and diverting dark comedy, Zero Motivation is a surprisingly insightful coming-of-age tale, utilizing the milieu of the military to look at desire, loneliness, identity, fitting in and many aspects of everyday complex female life.
- 90Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlVillage VoiceAlan ScherstuhlZero Motivation opens as bleak, rebellious comedy but grows into a smart and moving story of entering adulthood.
- 88RogerEbert.comRogerEbert.comLike classic military comedies from “Catch-22” to “M*A*S*H,” Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation offers its own appealing blend of irreverence and absurdism.
- 80The GuardianJordan HoffmanThe GuardianJordan HoffmanZero Motivation is a shot of honesty, in which short-term goals are far more important than larger geo-political ones. Perhaps because they are the only ones over which we have any control.
- 75The A.V. ClubVadim RizovThe A.V. ClubVadim RizovMelancholy climactic trajectory aside, Zero Motivation is primarily very funny.
- 70VarietyRonnie ScheibVarietyRonnie ScheibBeneath the strings of gags and wisecracks run parallel threads of ruthlessness and hysteria which bring “Motivation” a little closer to “Full Metal Jacket” than “Private Benjamin” as off-screen conflicts invade the closed-in encampment.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeThe Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeComic subplots are less zany than flatly hopeless, occasionally acting as deflating metaphors for army life.
- 70The DissolveMike D'AngeloThe DissolveMike D'AngeloZero Motivation never stops being sharply funny, and there’s scarcely a hint of didacticism in its depiction of female soldiers who are essentially treated as a secretarial pool, so bored that they have to invent tasks to perform and create melodrama from scratch.
- 63Slant MagazineNick McCarthySlant MagazineNick McCarthyZero Motivation is refreshingly casual in the depiction of its female-centric environment, but the freshness of its performances is often compromised by a directorial impulse to reduce the female experience to spiteful girl fights, virginal malaise, and bunk-bed antagonism.
- 50The New York TimesManohla DargisThe New York TimesManohla DargisEverything looks authentic, at least on the surface, from the desert dust to the messy desks and the sad, barren barracks. The characters, however, are largely cartoons, and their day-to-day exchanges are as vaguely defined as their interior lives.