Metacritic reviews

The improvisational method with which this film evolved allows its actors to show us so many sides to their people, so much volatility, that it can take a while for its key figures to involve us. But snare us Taylor, Harris and Grace most surely do.

It’s a power house.

To paraphrase a passage from one of the character's journals, Girls Town illustrates how these young women express themselves in ways that compensate for the words they do not yet have.

I would like to see another movie in three or four years, about what has happened to these angry, gifted friends.

This is the movie for anyone who has ever sat around with friends and thought, "Someone should make a movie about this," a film that captures the tenderness and quick humor of hanging out. It's not an easy task. We may find our own friends delightful, but watching other people's friends is a dreary prospect.

Scrupulously unpreachy, it resists all attempts to distill a moral or message, seeking truth in the honesty of its characters and their process of self-discovery.

It’s hard not to like these characters, or to come away without a little more sympathy for the nonlinear ways teenage girls can react to a world that often makes no sense and offers no apologies.

Not to be confused with the 1959 Mamie Van Doren-Mel Torme exploitation item, this is an uneven first feature (1996) by independent filmmaker Jim McKay about the friendship of three rebellious high school seniors.

The actors tend to think that everything they do in pursuit of character is great, wonderful and worthy of being shown. They're rarely accomplished enough to strut their stuff, nor assured enough to know when to hold back.

Instead of an escape from Hollywood’s cookie-cutter plots, it’s a retreat back into them, only the sexes have been changed.