The latter element joins with Crudup's excellent acting to make this deliberately scruffy tale a worthwhile experience if you can handle its explicitly sordid subplots.

An especially compassionate look at human frailty that also never loses sight of the inherent ridiculousness of "the human condition." Jesus' Son is one of this summer's best movies.

Wildly funny bum's rush through the existentially absurd, self-engendered peaks and valleys of the junkie's lament.

A mesmerizing film spinning from hilarity to heartbreak.

In a sea of one-note symphonies, this touching feature is bleak and comic, heartbreaking and affirmative, romantic and tragic, gimlet-eyed and sympathetic, all at the same time.

Floats before your eyes like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The surprise is that, fitted together, these pieces make a completed picture.

A story of faith and redemption, as viewed through the blurry and bloodshot eyes of a young man.

Jesus' Son surprises me with moments of wry humor, poignancy, sorrow and wildness. It has a sequence as funny as any I've seen this year.

If you haven't seen his (Crudup's) work before, Jesus' Son could be the one that makes you his biggest disciple.

Another grotty drama about junkie love? Well, yes...I make an exception for Jesus' Son.

If the result doesn't make dazzling watching, it nonetheless has the power to haunt.

It has a nobility and modesty, along with a refreshing lack of cynical attitude, that you rarely find in independent films these days.

An intermittently compelling and occasionally hilarious road movie.

It's best to see this as a drug buffet. Graze through the vignettes... and you'll find three or four tasty bits to snack on.