Anonymous
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: October 28, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
50
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
19
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertOct 26, 2011
Because of the ingenious screenplay by John Orloff, precise direction by Roland Emmerich and the casting of memorable British actors, you can walk into the theater as a blank slate, follow and enjoy the story, and leave convinced - if of nothing else - that Shakespeare was a figure of compelling interest. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 27, 2011
Tremendously entertaining. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderBen SachsOct 27, 2011
Still, this is irresistible as self-knowing camp: the players ham it up in high fashion and the script crams at least one lurid revelation into every scene. Read full review
80
Boxoffice MagazineAmy NicholsonOct 5, 2011
Why is Emmerich elbowing his way into the conversation about Shakespearean authorship? Because the debate is explosive - and he can't resist packing on a few more pounds of dynamite on his confident drama of incest, greed and beheadings. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttOct 5, 2011
The film grabs at historical facts, mangles them into a plot worthy of a John le Carré spy novel and takes the viewer on a breathtaking ride through ye olde London. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanNov 3, 2011
Anonymous is fun – if you take the anti-Shakespearean tale as events set in an unreal, alternate universe. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 31, 2011
Anonymous is well-paced and never threatens to bore or become too scholarly. Read full review
75
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottOct 28, 2011
Anonymous starts admirably quickly, but Emmerich repeatedly forgets to look over his shoulder to see if his audience is keeping track of which stringy-haired Calvin Klein model is which. Read full review
75
MovielineStephanie ZacharekOct 27, 2011
Ifans takes dorky, grandiose dialogue and turns it into something almost - well, Shakespearean. Read full review
75
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreOct 26, 2011
Even lacking the laughs and romance, he (Emmerich) has delivered an entertaining eye-roller of alternative history. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyOct 27, 2011
William Shakespeare - whoever he was - I think would probably be at least a little amused by Anonymous. For amusing it is - along with bawdy, brazen, politically outrageous, plausible enough and occasionally graced with something close to Shakespearean cleverness in an absurdist sort of way. Read full review
70
VarietyRobert KoehlerOct 5, 2011
The film as a whole isn't quite as interesting, though it is noteworthy that action specialist Emmerich has clearly decided to change course here from anything he's previously made. Although this is primarily a writer's film, with John Orloff's screenplay (and dialogue) placed front and center, Anonymous surprises with how classical, staid and traditional Emmerich's mise-en-scene is, never straying from tried-and-true costumer standards. Read full review
67
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 26, 2011
The most succinct evidence that Shakespeare was a fraud is offered by Derek Jacobi in prologue and epilogue, alone on a Broadway stage before a rapt audience. As usual in matters of the Bard, the play's the thing. Read full review
63
New York PostLou LumenickOct 28, 2011
Where Anonymous has it all over "Shakespeare in Love'' is its detailed evocation of London from four centuries ago. The rowdy audience for Shakespeare's first works at the Globe Theatre is especially colorful. Read full review
63
ObserverRex ReedOct 27, 2011
Historians are already calling Anonymous preposterous humbug, but I found it a complex cornucopia of ideas and panache. You go away sated. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigOct 27, 2011
Ifans is convincingly world-weary as the earl who prefers writing sonnets to the pageantry of court life. Anonymous aims to be epic but is closer to stately soap opera. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 27, 2011
Anonymous is ridiculous, and like Oliver Stone's "JFK" it sells its political conspiracy theories by weight and by volume. But dull, it's not. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith UhlichOct 25, 2011
Other than ludicrously pulpy fun, Anonymous, true to its title, ultimately signifies nothing. Read full review
50
NPRBob MondelloOct 28, 2011
Bottom line: Grant the film's big moments a kind of loopy majesty, and note that they're better acted than they deserve to be, not just by Ifans, Redgrave and Spall, but by David Thewlis and Edward Hogg as the villainous father-son team of William and Robert Cecil. It's a classy cast. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyOct 28, 2011
The less you know about Shakespeare, the more you're likely to enjoy Anonymous. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 27, 2011
With Anonymous, director Roland Emmerich gives us "Shakespeare in Luck." Make that "Dumb Luck": In this alternately entertaining and wildly ham-handed speculative romp. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliOct 27, 2011
So if you don't mind, I'll just go back to believing that someone named Shakespeare (whoever he was) wrote Shakespeare's works. And I'll just go back to regarding them with awe. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 27, 2011
Say this for Emmerich, he's not stuffy. And he lucks out big-time with his cast. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisOct 27, 2011
The moviemaking is proficient, if unremarkable. I like the idea of an Elizabethan action movie apparently more than I enjoy watching one. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyOct 27, 2011
An airless, bilious, endless pageant of pseudohistory. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 27, 2011
Anonymous is a vulgar prank on the English literary tradition, a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it's not bad. Read full review
50
TimeMary PolsOct 27, 2011
Emmerich has turned his attention to the past. He and screenwriter John Orloff have embraced a kitchen sink's worth of 20th-century conspiracy theories about the provenance of Shakespeare's plays, each wilder than the last. Oliver Stone's "JFK" looks reasonable compared to this. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldConnie OgleOct 27, 2011
The cast is impressive, and the story even soapier than "The Tudors," if you like that sort of thing. Read full review
50
Village VoiceNick PinkertonOct 25, 2011
Emmerich's movie is sporadically enjoyable trash with better performances than it has any right to: Hogg's verminous villain leaves a trail of cold, oozing hisses. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid DenbyOct 21, 2011
The Oxford theory is ridiculous, yet the filmmakers go all the way with it, producing endless scenes of indecipherable court intrigue in dark, smoky rooms, and a fashion show of ruffs, farthingales, and halberds. The more far-fetched the idea, it seems, the more strenuous the effort to pass it off as authentic. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 29, 2011
Frankly, if I'm going to be offered a heaping pile of revisionism about the greatest writer who ever lived, I'd rather it be from someone with more academic heft than the director of "Independence Day" and "Godzilla." I trust the teachers who receive this film's study guide have a shredder handy. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumOct 26, 2011
Thumpingly silly yet self-serious period-piece what-if. Read full review
42
IndieWireEric KohnOct 25, 2011
Emmerich takes the story at face value and delivers a film unlike any of his others. That is to say, a boring one. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanOct 28, 2011
Though the cast is energetic and the intrigues diverting, you'll have to distance yourself from reality to enjoy so much outlandish scheming. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovOct 26, 2011
"Shakespeare in Love" it ain't, but the wealth of stage and screen talent on display, most if not all of whom have essayed one or another of the Bard's characters in the past (including a modern-day introduction by Sir Derek Jacobi), make for a pleasantly ridiculous descent into utter confabulation. Read full review
40
EmpirePhil de SemlyenOct 24, 2011
A curveball from the man who made "2012" and "Independence Day" and probably only a brief respite for the world's major cities.It's more of an interesting curio to a blockbuster career but there's fun to be had here if you look hard enough. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineBill WeberOct 26, 2011
Anonymous leaves one bereft of any meaningful knowledge of these personages or the theatrical energy of their age, and earns the obscurity it figures to acquire even if the war between Team Edward and Team William blazes on. Read full review
33
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsOct 26, 2011
It's as dull as it is brainless, the work of creators who've spent far more time concocting silly stories about Shakespeare than learning from him. Read full review
30
SlateDana StevensOct 28, 2011
What's disappointing about Anonymous is that it isn't dumb enough. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 27, 2011
In a movie that rings false at every turn, Ms. Redgrave's Elizabeth is truly and infallibly regal. Read full review
30
SalonLaura MillerOct 27, 2011
The result is a bombastic, flashback-ridden farrago of skulking villains, scenery-chewing actors, sub-"Ivanhoe"-style dialogue and what seems like a dozen pretty, flaxen-haired men storming in and out of rooms in snits. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 24, 2011
A well-polished cowpat that will confuse and bore those who know nothing about Shakespeare and incense those who know almost anything. Read full review
25
St. Louis Post-DispatchJudith NewmarkNov 6, 2011
The movie inspired theater critic Judith Newmark to write a sonnet in response. Read full review
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