Bad Education
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: November 19, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
5
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
A rapturous masterwork. Read full review
100
The New York TimesStephen Holden
Bad Education is a voluptuous experience that invites you to gorge on its beauty and vitality, although it has perhaps the darkest ending of any of the films by the Spanish writer and director. Read full review
100
New York PostV.A. Musetto
From the Hitchcockian opening credits to the final frame, Almodovar has Hitch on his mind. Read full review
100
PremiereGlenn Kenny
Almodóvar has created a dense, audacious film in which layers of cinematic artifice lovingly camouflage (at least for a while) its characters’ dark, damaged heart. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
This is a brilliantly structured hall of mirrors that wraps Catholicism and the movie industry into a tasty film noir. Read full review
100
Washington PostDesson Thomson
The result is one of Almodovar's darkest films since the early days of "Law of Desire" and "Matador," and certainly one of his finest. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
To watch Bad Education is to revel, along with Almodovar, in the power of cinema to take us on journeys of breathtaking mystery and dimension and beauty. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Bad Education, in this light, is Almodovar's "8-1/2" or "Day for Night," a lens through which all of his movies appear as a seamless whole. It's not the story of his actual life but, more excitingly, the deft, witty, bittersweet story of the life of his art. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
With Bad Education, the great Almodóvar delivers the finest movie of his career. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
It's a film noir that grows more potent as its secrets are revealed. Read full review
90
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Complex and devious beyond easy recounting, Bad Education is about the fallout from the ending of a "pure" love between boys, consecrated in an Almodóvaran temple--a movie theatre. Read full review
90
VarietyJonathan Holland
Superbly orchestrated, visually impressive. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
It's the director's most complexly ordered film to date - a labyrinth of ids, egos and alter egos waiting around blind corners - and may be the movies' most deliriously inventive narrative spiral since "Adaptation." Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
With Bad Education, Almodóvar is at his most breathtakingly complex and mature, and at his most pessimistic. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
In this cross between film noir and melodrama, there's lust, need, camp and betrayal. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Almodóvar has never been shy about experimenting with plot structure, but Bad Education is the closest he's ever come to a metamovie, the sort of self-reflective, hall-of-mirrors contraption on which Charlie Kaufman has built his career. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Pedro Almodovar's new movie is like an ingenious toy that is a joy to behold, until you take it apart to see what makes it work, and then it never works again. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
A masterful epic charting love's labyrinths. Read full review
80
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
In accounting for Almodóvar's identity as an artist and a man, Bad Education comes together like a bold and far-reaching summation of his career to date. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderStaff (Not credited)
If you're a fan of professional bad boy and Spanish gender bender Pedro Almodovar, far be it from me to dissuade you from enjoying this elaborate Chinese-box narrative, which boasts an especially resourceful performance by Gael Garcia Bernal. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Spain's most important living filmmaker isn't at his very best in this complicated tale, but it raises still-timely questions well worth pondering. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
A big change of pace for the bad-boy Spanish director. Like his other work, it's kinky and proudly gay, but this time it's not a comedy. It's a serious neo-film-noir, and a pretty darn good one at that. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleCarla Meyer
Intoxicating and flawed. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Even when the plots of sexual confusions, transgression and tragedy became absurdly complicated and arbitrary, there was always the mise-en-scène to die for. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Ken Tucker
May be at once too gimmicky and too sincere. But it still exerts an uncanny power: Like the best of Almodóvar’s work, it throws you a first-love sucker punch that will stagger your heart, mind, and soul. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
By turns enthralling, seductive and deeply disturbing. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneRobert K. Elder
If only Bad Education engaged the heart as much as the head, Almodovar's fractured tale might have risen above its alienating noir conventions. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Ultimately, Bad Education must be considered to be a minor effort from a major director. Read full review
60
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
There's something dull and evasive at the film's center--for one thing, contrary to its festival buzz, Bad Education tiptoes around the issue of priesthood pedophilia; lovelorn gazes are as desperate as it gets. Read full review
60
Dallas ObserverMelissa Levine
Begins as comedy, morphs into drama and only belatedly introduces the noir requisites of subterfuge, cunning and death--none of which, by that time, is necessary or even welcome. There is a great deal of life in this movie, and also promise, but its creepy ending betrays its sincere and painful core. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
After two flat-out triumphs in a row, "All About My Mother" in 1999 and last year's breathtaking "Talk To Her," Pedro Almodóvar hasn't done it again. Yet lesser Almodóvar -- in this instance "Bad Education" -- is better than most of the movies we see.
50
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Leaves the viewer with the sense of a writing-directing talent concocting complexities. Everything he touches is well-turned, but he now feels compelled to put the pieces together in something other than a lucid design. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The movie gets as overblown and masochistic as the worst Joan Crawford vehicle. Its saving grace is that Bernal really does have his own deep-set, smoldering variation on Bette Davis eyes. Read full review
10
Film ThreatPhil Hall
Such garbage that taking a shower at the Bates Motel is a more appealing alternative. Read full review
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