Entertainment Weekly Sundance Review
(Entertainment Weekly; 7 February 2003)– The desire to tickle taboos remains a quintessential Sundance mode, and PARTY MONSTER, a camp tabloid nightmare set in the New York club-kid demimonde of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, may be the closest the movies have come to capturing the poison Day-Glo flamboyance of the gay glam underground, a scene as riveting in its hatred as the outer reaches of punk.

Macaulay Culkin, as the hustling ringleader Michael Alig, and Seth Green, as his fabulous mentor James St. James, turn stunt casting into a heroic act of slumming, and the movie, which codirectors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato spun out of their 1996 documentary, is a stagy yet gripping look at the scandalous lost stepchildren of Warhol, Divine, and Halloween.

It is often said that the documentaries are the best films at Sundance; this year, the best movies were dramas that were also documents. That’s true of Thirteen and Party Monster...