Auto Focus
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: October 18, 2002 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
9
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film is pitch-perfect in its decor, music, clothes, cars, language and values. It takes place during those heady years between the introduction of the Pill and the specter of AIDS, when men shaped as adolescents by Playboy in the 1950s now found some of their fantasies within reach. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Michael Gerbosi's script might have reduced Crane to a clueless cliche were it not for the bruised humanity that Greg Kinnear brings to the role. Kinnear is dynamite. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
In Auto Focus, the strangely wonderful and weirdly touching new film from Paul Schrader, the comedy and the tragedy keep getting mixed up. Read full review
90
Washington PostDesson Thomson
In this admirably unconventional film, director Paul Schrader is interested in just about everything BUT traditional biopic business. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleSteve Davis
The set and art direction are superb, evoking Sixties and Seventies décor with a dazzling precision. Read full review
88
New York PostLou Lumenick
Schrader's strongest movie since "Affliction," is another meditation on American masculinity powerfully told with great wit and style. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
This movie is for select tastes. It's not the fusillade of porn that wears you down, but the melancholy of watching an unremarkable man glide down the tubes as if on a water slide. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
The performances are vividly alive. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Certainly the movie is one of Schrader's most accomplished, and most entertaining, but there's something cold and unforgiving about his vision, delivered with a severity that only a bred-in-the-bone Calvinist could muster. Read full review
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Kinnear's performance has to be one of the most sympathetic acts of decency one actor has ever extended to another. Crane always wanted to be a real, respectable movie actor. Channeled through Kinnear, he finally gets his wish. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
On one level, it's an unsettling biopic and an acerbic look at a bygone media age. On another, it's a cautionary tale with uncommon relevance and bite. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The film is so explicit (endless swinging parties and porno scenes, more bouncing breasts than a Russ Meyer movie) that it finally becomes the thing it fears. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
A compelling motion picture that illustrates an American tragedy and shows the transformation of a decent family man into someone whose struggles with addiction and association with the wrong man bring him to an untimely end, with no hope of retribution. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Is Auto Focus a cautionary tale or just a morbid, voyeuristic foray into kitsch and kink? Whatever it is, it's not pretty - it's the cinematic equivalent of soiled, stained sheets. You'll want to run out of the theater straight to a Laundromat. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Skates over depravity when, like Crane, it should have dug down deeper. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
A compelling, sympathetic portrait. Read full review
70
NewsweekDavid Ansen
It’s not a particularly sexy movie. What’s shocking to Schrader is not Crane’s promiscuity, but his obtuseness. It’s the story of the unbearable lightness of Bob.
70
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
This ultra-stylish film is far more interested in exploring its own central image -- the camera -- than the forensic minutia of the mystery. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Schrader directs with a very smooth hand, providing a good-natured and frequently amusing spin to eventually grim material that aptly reflects the protagonist's almost unfailing good humor. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
The inventive performances -- keep this story interesting in spite of its puritanical framework. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Certainly holds one's attention, but it's a strange and grim experience, ice-cold and borderline pointless. [28 October 2002, p. 119]
70
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Gets to you like a low-grade fever, a malaise with no known antidote. When it was over, I wasn't sure if I needed a drink, a shower or a lifelong vow of chastity. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
When the bloody climax comes, we look on apathetically, as desensitized to the violence as a pornographer is to sex. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Uplifting? Not bloody likely. Mesmerizing? Very, thanks to Greg Kinnear's eerie performance as Crane and director Paul Schrader's lucid depiction of the character's happy-go-lucky descent into hell. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Paul Schrader's movies depict dark nights of the soul, but sometimes you feel like you have to end the dark night with a shower. Auto Focus is such a movie. Read full review
60
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It never answers the key question: Why should we care? Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
It's a clammy, depressing movie, but not a very illuminating one. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Kinnear's mesmerizing performance comes close to redeeming Auto Focus, suggesting depths the film never gets around to exposing, but Schrader's alternately flat and histrionic storytelling sends the film hurtling beyond redemption. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Auto Focus doesn't really go anywhere, but then neither does any form of obsessive-compulsive behavior -- which may be Schrader's point. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
It grows repetitious, both in its account of Crane's ritual behavior and in clumsily written -- and stolidly directed -- scenes between Crane and Carpenter, two men acting out their own unacknowledged sexual drama.
50
TimeRichard Corliss
Schrader's objectification of sad and stupid material is neither tragic nor transgressive. It is just undramatic and uninvolving. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Auto Focus is a gutless wonder. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Schrader really isn't interested in Crane except as the straw man for his moral lessons about sin and sexuality and the nature of celebrity. Auto Focus is the perfect capper to Crane's career: Even in a movie about himself, he remains minor. Read full review
40
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
This film about sex is so joyless, so astonishingly unsexy, it's like watching porn with your grandfather going tsk-tsk-tsk over your shoulder for two hours. Read full review
30
Film ThreatPhil Hall
Perhaps it is a shame that no one thought of digitally restoring and theatrically releasing the sex videos that Crane made with the many women he pleasured...that would have been far more entertaining than anything found in Auto Focus. Read full review
30
SlateDavid Edelstein
Schrader is like a reformed addict who isn't even honest enough to show what once gave him pleasure. He's the most dangerous kind of crusader. In Auto Focus, he makes you hate sex and movies equally. Read full review
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