Ponyboi

The quiet character-based scenes are often mesmerizing, as are the dreamy sequences where time seems to stand still. When the plot makes its demands, the spell is broken.

Gallo’s star-making turn pushes back against this version of hypermasculinity, reshaping genre conventions that have privileged rigid gender binaries. Watching Gallo carve out space for Ponyboi is its own kind of powerful assertion.

Ponyboi is a queer cinema genre pastiche that understands a movie can be artful, emotional, and incredibly entertaining.


A sleek film, only occasionally hampered by predictability and contrivance.

Cinema history is short on anyone remotely like Gallo, whose million-watt charisma and one-of-a-kind experience feel wasted in this role.

When the director Esteban Arango’s “Ponyboi” is humming, it’s an inventive crime-thriller.

The film is a swirl of action beats with internalised emotional resonance, and the result is inventive and involving.

Ponyboi has good and bad parts to offer. And River Gallo’s performance as Ponyboi can easily be the sum of its best parts.

Sundance breakout “Ponyboi” is as unwilling to settle on a plot as its main character is wary of strictly defining his gender.

Ponyboi blends two familiar halves – a drug deal gone wrong and an LGBTQ+ coming-of-age story – into something fresh and compelling.