"Alverson... fearlessly captured the confusion, isolation, and inability to connect that plagues many people but he also has the intelligence to avoid offering definitive explanations.
It is enough to accurately present the dilemma and to that end
THE COMEDY is a masterpiece of observation".
—Gordon and the whale.com

"a work of art that's both simultaneously hilarious and disturbing, Heidecker using the same skills he's honed in his TV and live comedy work, but to a terrifying degree...The Comedy is an ambitious, purposefully off-putting film, a dissection of where we find comedy and how we react to it, and a lampoon of the indie style... Swanson is wired like Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, swapping violence for wisecracks... Walking into The Comedy with an open-mind and curiosity of human ugliness may have you thinking about the movie for days afterward.
—Hollywood.com

“deserves tremendous respect for its clarity of vision...
It’s not ‘Animal House,’ it’s Lars von Trier’s ‘The Idiots.’
—IFC

“A dark, determinedly abrasive study of a slovenly Brooklyn hipster … this singular Sundance entry is certain to split reactions every which way… Heidecker …
gives a compulsively fascinating performance… Alverson's unfussy filmmaking breathes quiet assurance”
—Variety

“by far one of the most wildly inappropriate
and pitch black comedies I’ve ever seen in my life”
—Film Threat

“Word on the street is you either love or you hate The Comedy -- an acerbic accounting of an over-privileged, aged Williamsburg hipster. I never knew what the main character, played perfectly by Tim Heidecker in his first dramatic role, was about to do -- not even for a second. For me, that was a major triumph of the film.”
—The Huffington Post

"An epic display of the over-privileged, eternally adolescent white American male behaving badly… Alverson is onto something culturally significant"
— Hollywood Reporter

A- “digs up something that affects more people than just Brooklynites, the lack of sincerity in our lives and this generation's reluctance of commitment. It's a meaty film, filled with ideas unobscured by any generic narrative string, a move that shows not only the confidence of the director but his respect of the audience. This is one that'll have people talking.” —Indiewire/The Playlist