Private Parts (1997) Critic Reviews

What can I tell you? It works. Private Parts is a comic firecracker with a surprising human touch.Read the full review

Private Parts is a supremely crafty, smartly written, and--given the number of "himselfs" and "herselfs" on the cast list--surprisingly well-acted piece of pop kitsch. Read the full review

A funny and unexpectedly beguiling account of the outrageous humorist's unlikely rise to the pinnacle of radio celebrity. Read the full review

Thanks to sharp editing and surprisingly strong comic timing, the film puts less emphasis on the Stern raunchiness than on how his wilder routines make listeners drive off the road.Read the full review

Private Parts is so riotous that you almost don't remember how unfunny Stern can be on his radio show.Read the full review

Howard Stern has been accused of a lot of things, but he has never been accused of being dumb. With Private Parts, his surprisingly sweet new movie, he makes a canny career move: Here is radio's bad boy walking the finest of lines between enough and too much.Read the full review

Private Parts is witty and fast-paced and makes Stern's raunchy, breast-obsessed, lesbian-fetishizing, big-penis-envying, arrested-adolescent outlook seem like harmless fun.Read the full review

Shaped and softened by producer Ivan Reitman, screenwriters Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko, and director Betty Thomas, however, the movie-star Stern is a defanged tiger, funny but tranquilized. Read the full review

The question hanging over Private Parts' financial success is whether enough non-Stern fans will venture to see what they may view as a "cult" or "niche" film. Most who take a chance, regardless of what prejudices they harbor against WXRK's top personality, will find themselves rewarded by a surprisingly pleasant two hours.Read the full review