SOURCE: A review of Monster in a Box and Impossible Vacation, in New Republic, July 6, 1992, pp. 26-8.

In the following review, Kaufmann offers a mixed assessment of Monster in a Box and Impossible Vacation.

Most of the comment about Spalding Gray, admiring though it rightly is, seems to me slightly skewed. He is praised for his heterodox, adventurous films, but that adventure of his begins in the theater. Why is Monster in a Box any more adventurous on film than it was on stage? (Likewise his previous film, Swimming to Cambodia.) It's assumed that Gray is more daring when he transfers his monologues to the screen because film demands greater visual variety than the theater and because film is inimical to language. Both of these assumptions are dubious (as plentiful examples show). To put it crassly, Gray runs just as much of a risk of tedium in the...