Bryant Frazer’s review published on Letterboxd:
I saw this for the first time at a multiplex in a nondescript shopping mall somewhere, as I recall, in southeast Denver. May as well have been Virgil, Texas. It was disorienting, partly because the environment we exited the movie into was indistinguishable from the film itself but also because the film itself seemed so hard to grasp. I wasn’t sure if it was a failed attempt at pop cinema or a successful prank from the avant-garde. (Of course I was a teenager at the time and didn’t know anything.) Today, the film seems more comprehensible as faux-documentary, and taken at face value it’s kind of a hoot. But the tone is still off. It reminds me of Wim Wenders’ idea of the West and of John Waters’ embrace of the American outsider, and I feel like it even anticipates the gentler bits of David Lynch. Byrne’s oh-gee take is it’s own thing, of course — he seems to enjoy this working vacation on the Texas plains, but I bet you’d have to pay him to live there.