Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

bkoganbing Susan Seidelman seems to have had a decent career with a few top notch credits under her belt. I'm certainly glad she bounced back from this film which seems to have its admirers. I'm not one of them.I've seen better acting in high school plays than I did in Smithereens. The plot such as it is involved young Susan Berman who is ambitious to make it in the world of music and is willing to do just about anything to get there. She even rejects the sincere advances of a young artist who is living out of his van off the East River played by Brad Rijn.Young Mr. Rijn contributes the worst performance in the film, in fact one of the worst acting jobs I've seen in a long time. No wonder he's not gone anywhere.I will say that Seidelman's eye for the camera is a good one in capturing the familiar East Village locations where the film was mostly shot. But her work with her live performers didn't measure up. I'm not sure she had that much raw material to work with.Look fast and you'll see a very young Christopher Noth before Law and Order and Sex in the City as a street hustler.If you like punk rock, you might sit through this for the soundtrack. I'll stick to Bing Crosby.

preppy-3 Wren (Susan Berman) is a restless young woman trying to break into the music scene in NY of the early 1980s. A young, handsome and trusting man named Paul (Brad Rijn) falls for her--but she just uses him and tries to hook up with self-centered Eric (Richard Hell) who says he has contacts to get a career going.This was a very impressive directorial debut by Susan Seidelman. It was made on a very low-budget and had mostly nonprofessional actors. It was surprisingly a favorite with critics and a success with art house college audiences of 1982. However it's pretty much disappeared since then. It's easy to see why. The clothes, music and attitudes are all clearly from the early 1980s. Most college kids today wouldn't know what to make of this. Still it's a good movie and, as a college kid from that era, I can honestly say this caught the look and feel of that time expertly. Purportedly this is also a pretty accurate portrayal about how the Village was way back then--hard to believe it was 25 years ago.The film itself is gritty and negative and looks cheap--but that's because it was and it actually helps the movie. Seidelman's direction was actually pretty assured considering it was her first feature movie. Also, for the most part, the acting is good--Rijn in particular stands out. The only negatives I can think of is that is a depressing movie and Berman is miscast. She's a good actress but seems far too intelligent for the character she's playing.Worth catching--especially for men and women who were in college in the early 1980s. It will really take you back! I give it an 8.

Peter Hayes In the era of Punk rock (well when America caught on anyway!) a sensitive would-be artist (Brad Rijn) and a female street hustler (Susan Berman) have an uneasy relationship in the less fashionable part of NYC.Susan Seidelman had a surprise hit with Desperately Seeking Susan straight after this and then she took a career nose dive. Maybe she doesn't have the ability to shout cut or somehow or some way falls in love with her own work. Or maybe she is too in love with off-beats and losers.This shows some power of observation (all street cliché boxes ticked), but little narrative drive. Just a semi-documentary about a time and a place that I'd rather not have been in or (given a time tunnel) want to go back to.With no money, no major talent and a script that looks like it was written in a week there isn't much hope for it - unless you are so in love with the punk rock scene that anything that references it counts as entertainment.

macabro357 I don't care what the naysayers below think. I like this little film. And I think the soundtrack blows the pants off of Penelope Spheeris' "Decline of Western Civilization" that was released not too long before this one. I'd love to find the "Smithereens" soundtrack on CD! Both this and "...Civilization" deal with the U.S. punk culture of the early 80s with this film clearly being the better of the two, imo. Saw 'em both at the same time.Great little story with a good feel for New York of the early 1980s, and the shallowness of the scene during that time. It really depicted what a loserville the place really was. I really felt for the Wren character and the rejection she continually faced, much of which was her own doing. She should have went back to New Jersey and made something of herself.Btw, whatever happened to Susan Berman, anyway? Why hasn't she done more films? my imbd rating: 7 out of 10