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True Stories

True Stories

Comedy · Music · 1986

A small but growing Texas town, filled with strange and musical characters, celebrates its sesquicentennial and converge on a local parade and talent show.

Movie details

True Stories

“A Completely Cool, Multi-Purpose Movie.”

1986 Comedy · Music 1h 29m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

7.3 / 10

8.6K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

78 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

67 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.7 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

A small but growing Texas town, filled with strange and musical characters, celebrates its sesquicentennial and converge on a local parade and talent show.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over True Stories?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Where it lives

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Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.

Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

David Byrne

Written by

Beth Henley · David Byrne · Stephen Tobolowsky

David Byrne

David Byrne

Narrator / Lip-Syncher

John Goodman

John Goodman

Louis Fyne

Annie McEnroe

Annie McEnroe

Kay Culver

Jo Harvey Allen

Jo Harvey Allen

The Lying Woman

Spalding Gray

Spalding Gray

Earl Culver

Alix Elias

Alix Elias

The Cute Woman

Roebuck 'Pops' Staples

Roebuck 'Pops' Staples

Mr. Tucker

Court is in session

Put True Stories on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.