Back to Black
Focus Features | Release Date: May 17, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
43
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
22
Negative:
13
Watch Now
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
We Got This CoveredFrancisca TinocoApr 15, 2024
There's a lot of compassion in 'Back to Black' for its troubled subject, but its best intentions become its worse mistakes when it fails to direct any semblance of a critical look at the multiple tragic events in Amy Winehouse's too-short life. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeApr 10, 2024
Sure, you will learn more – and hear more of the original recordings – in Asif Kapadia’s great documentary Amy, but Taylor-Johnson does a decent job of making a tight drama from the same tragic yarn. Read full review
60
Total FilmJames MottramApr 9, 2024
A competent if occasionally clunky biopic, enlivened by a superb Marisa Abela, who truly inhabits Winehouse and brings those songs to life. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyApr 9, 2024
By concentrating on the relationship, the road they’ve taken here is too narrow, but I’m sympathetic to the problem: sharpening your focus always gives biopics more lift-off than vaguely trying to cram everything in. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinApr 9, 2024
Back to Black is, like its heroine, flawed and fallible but frequently very affecting. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 31, 2024
Like a lot of musical bio-pics, from maudlin Whitney Houston stories to the overrated Oscar winners “La Vie En Rose” and the much more fun “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the filmmakers limit us to “the greatest hits.” And that’s a far from complete or wholly satisfying immersion in this life and her world. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMay 21, 2024
My reaction is that I could learn a lot more about Winehouse by listening to her music than by watching this by-the-numbers sketch of her adult life. Read full review
50
Washington PostTy BurrMay 16, 2024
The new movie, in fact, has been made with the approval of the Winehouse family; coincidentally or not, “Back to Black” has the feeling of a whitewash. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshMay 16, 2024
With a visual style that is straightforward and serviceable at best and a frustratingly limited emotional range, Back to Black never captures the beauty of Winehouse’s talent, the heartbreak of her performances or the horror of her tragedy. Read full review
50
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiApr 9, 2024
Tells the story of Amy Winehouse but shows no passion in telling it and has nothing to say about the events that transpire. It’s the utter minimum of what a biopic can be. Read full review
50
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyApr 9, 2024
In Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back To Black, Winehouse’s brief, brilliant life is essentially pared down to a tale of poisoned romance. Read full review
42
The Film StageAlistair RyderApr 24, 2024
Although the filmmakers say that Winehouse’s family didn’t interfere with the creative process, this watered-down interpretation of her troubles feels written with the intention of ruffling as few feathers as possible, pulling its punches when dramatizing the more harrowing moments in her life. Read full review
42
IndieWireVikram MurthiApr 10, 2024
The palpable sincerity behind “Back to Black” almost makes its myriad weaknesses more glaring. Everyone involved in the film approaches the late artist with love and respect, but its tawdry instincts and misguided sense of responsibility let her memory down. Read full review
40
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiMay 17, 2024
With the documentary Amy painting a more detailed and intimate portrait of the singer’s life, it’s hard to recommend such a stilted, unimaginative biopic that doesn’t do Winehouse any justice. Read full review
40
ABC NewsPeter TraversMay 17, 2024
While this sanitized and superficial Amy Winehouse biopic flounders around in search of focus, new star Marisa Abela gives her blazing all to capturing the late singer’s short, turbulent life and lasting art with stunning ferocity and feeling. Read full review
40
Paste MagazineJade GomezMay 16, 2024
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black—her attempt at telling the taboo tale of one of music’s most tragic figures, Amy Winehouse—leans too much into the dark cloud looming over the singer’s sad demise, in turn fumbling what could’ve been a rare, successful dramatization of fame and addiction. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerMay 16, 2024
Taking its title from her second and final critically-acclaimed blockbuster album, music biopic Back to Black gives you all those details you’ll recognize – but not much beyond that. Read full review
40
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 15, 2024
A movie like this—about such a fiery, singular person—should not play like mere misty elegy, a brief recounting of happy memories and sad ones that amounts to a sentimental sketch of an artist. Where is the whir of the world as Winehouse saw it, the matrix of pleasure and heartbreak that so fascinated her? Where is the Winehouse who, in the full glare of her being, ought to be remembered? Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeApr 15, 2024
There are moments when Abela disappears and Winehouse bursts on to the screen, like a magic eye picture blinked fleetingly into focus. But the film is wildly uneven and prone to catastrophic misjudgments – in that at least it’s true to Winehouse’s spirit. Read full review
40
Time OutPhil de SemlyenApr 10, 2024
Not all of these vignettes are duds – Amy’s meet-cute with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell, excellent) over pints and pool in a Camden boozer is genuinely terrific – but they don’t make a script that already feels soft-soaped to get the Winehouse’s estate’s approval, feel any less pedestrian. Read full review
40
EmpireHayley CampbellApr 9, 2024
A solid performance let down by a script that cherry-picks the facts and ultimately tells us less than we already know. Watch Asif Kapadia’s Amy instead. Read full review
40
The IndependentCharlotte O'SullivanApr 9, 2024
Back to Black is a fitfully enjoyable little package that will do wonders for the careers of Abela and O’Connell. But unlike Winehouse’s oeuvre, it’s not worth taking seriously. It’s just too afraid of the dark. Read full review
More From This Movie

43 Critic Reviews

tbd User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 77 Project Hail Mary
2 75 Send Help
3 73 Hoppers
4 71 The Sheep Detectives
5 68 Crime 101
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL