Alexander
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: November 24, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
40
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
16
Negative:
18
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Since the movie lacks a vision of what Alexander was really about as a man and a figure in history, it falls back all too frequently on movie spectacle. Read full review
60
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
The creators of Alexander set out to make an epic, and they can't be faulted for the many elements that succeed on this scale; what's unfortunate is that they don't quite deliver a camp classic. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
At best an honorable failure, an intelligent and ambitious picture that crucially lacks dramatic flair and emotional involvement. Read full review
50
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Sometimes stunning, ultimately stupefying epic . Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
By de-mythologizing Alexander, Stone has turned him into an unbelievable individual. We accept great deeds from great people, not from sniveling whiners. Read full review
50
L.A. Weekly
What Stone has delivered instead is no folie de grandeur, but rather the last thing one would have expected from him: an honorable failure. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Despite a three-hour running time Stone is too occupied with psychodrama to explore Alexander's innovations in battle, and Farrell, clearly out of his depth, seems less a leader of men than a Hellenistic James Dean. Read full review
50
SlateDavid Edelstein
Forget Alexander: The film is a pedestal to Angelina the great. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
[Stone] gives us provocative notes and sketches but not a final draft. The film doesn't feel at ease with itself. It says too much, and yet leaves too much unsaid. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Call it "Alexander the Grate," because, over the marathon of its three-hour running time, this wonky epic really does get on your nerves. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Farrell plays all this as if he means it, but he seems slight in the role and without great physical presence. In a scene in which Alexander is roaring at his troops to rouse them to battle, he sounds like Mighty Mouse pretending to be Superman. Read full review
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Enjoyable in some places, but dreadful in others. It's boring here and exciting there. And it's almost always goofy. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
An exhausted epic, one that Stone has directed with an almost startling lack of personality or vision. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
There are two stunning battle sequences, and that rose-tinted bloodbath is a stroke of the eccentric genius for which Stone is famous. Read full review
40
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Never have a great historical hero's accomplishments seemed so inconsequential, or so damned hard to figure out. Read full review
40
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
The happy couple (Farrell/Dawson) do enjoy one great scene together, and it's the high point of the movie-a naked tussle, in which she puts a knife to his throat. The whole sequence is quick, funny, and arousing, in sharp contrast to the rest of Alexander, which is sluggish, unsmiling. Read full review
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