Biutiful
Liddell Entertainment | Release Date: December 29, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
11
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttDec 30, 2010
Biutiful has a strong, linear narrative drive. Nevertheless, and most of all, it's a gorgeous, melancholy tone poem about love, fatherhood and guilt. Read full review
90
Boxoffice MagazinePete HammondDec 22, 2010
Biutiful, which gets it name from a child's misspelling of the word, is in itself a beautiful, mesmerizing film and Iñárritu's masterpiece. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaFeb 3, 2011
Biutiful is strong stuff, it will leave you shaken. There's poetry here, and catastrophe. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigJan 27, 2011
Bardem's soulful turn lends this haunting meditation a sense of hope and saves it from the contrived missteps it teeters toward. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 27, 2011
It's Bardem's portrayal of his search for those answers that drives Biutiful forward. Read full review
80
EmpireAndrew MaleJan 24, 2011
Iñárritu has made a modern classical tragedy and, in Javier Bardem, he has found his first authentic hero; a character caught up in an intricate web of events he cannot extricate himself from. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJan 28, 2011
As much as Bardem is an expressive instrument for parlaying Iñárritu's somber worldview, so too is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, whose stunning compositions find the poetry amid the sorrow. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenFeb 11, 2011
In this vast balloon of a film, Bardem is the ballast – that Manichean face is a movie onto itself. Read full review
75
Washington PostSean O'ConnellJan 28, 2011
Biutiful soars to its highest points once it shifts its focus away from death to ask us how we are choosing to live our lives. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 27, 2011
Biutiful exists, at its best and beautifully, in that space that's hard to define, between the outside and the interior, action and thought, body and soul. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJan 26, 2011
Surely few actors have faces that project sorrow more completely than Bardem. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. MusettoDec 29, 2010
Set on the seamy side of Barcelona, Biutiful may not be a feel-good movie for this time of year, but it's well worth your time. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 29, 2010
Shot hand-held with a poet's eye by Rodrigo Prieto, the film is relentless but as riveting as the world a remarkable actor lets us see through Uxbal's eyes. Bravo, Bardem. Read full review
70
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 29, 2010
Nothing says "Awards Season" like feel-bad cinema, and with Biutiful, Iñárritu hauls out the big guns. He also, maddeningly, has one hell of a weapon in his star, Javier Bardem. Read full review
70
TimeMary PolsDec 25, 2010
The hardest movies to review are the ones you respect and admire but don't love and also - and this is the crucial part - aren't angered by. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful is just that sort of film. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn LevyJan 27, 2011
Yet another, albeit sparer, Iñárritu gloom-fest. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsFeb 3, 2011
The saving grace of Biutiful is Bardem. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisJan 27, 2011
The movie wails in pain. And it's that sort of grand empathy that makes Iñárritu both impossible to dismiss and impossible to live with. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJan 27, 2011
The movie is unwieldy and overstuffed with subplots - and, at 2 1/2 hours, probably too much misery and sorrow for most viewers. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyDec 29, 2010
Sometimes it seems as if Iñárritu is literally carving out his actor's heart, so tangible does Bardem make Uxbal's fears. Iñárritu has so much that he wants to say - too much, in fact, and the film's central weakness - that he has created an emotional tsunami for both the actors and the audience. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 29, 2010
Here, it's all Bardem, and this great actor's careworn face and sensitive presence counts for a lot. He ultimately can't save the soul of Biutiful, but he makes the journey easier. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 29, 2010
Mr. Bardem, best known to American audiences for his chillingly persuasive embodiment of evil in "No Country for Old Men," combines muscular, charismatic physicality with an almost delicate sensitivity, and this blend of the rough and the tender gives Biutiful a measure of emotional credibility that it may not entirely deserve. Read full review
58
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 27, 2011
It's a one-note character that Bardem builds into a complex emotional chord, lessening the urge to dismiss Biutiful solely as an endurance test for viewers. Read full review
50
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottFeb 4, 2011
It is raw, it is searing, it is honest. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 29, 2011
Iñárritu does the actor no favors by putting him through the existential wringer every step of the way. Uxbal suffers for all our sins. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderAndrea GronvallJan 27, 2011
Cinematographer Rodrigo Pietro grounds the ghostly encounters in grainy imagery, his unobtrusive handheld camera and deeply saturated colors best appreciated in a nightclub sequence that looks like something from Hieronymous Bosch. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 27, 2011
For many, this central performance will be more than enough. For others, the film will simply be too much. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 30, 2010
The safe course is to recommend the film, which seems pitilessly long at 147 minutes, only for the transcendent quality of Javier Bardem's performance. Read full review
50
NPRMark JenkinsDec 28, 2010
However much Uxbal tries to help Barcelona's dispossessed, Biutiful doesn't really have anything to say about the modern world's economic migrants. Indeed, it could even be said that the movie exploits them. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasDec 28, 2010
In spite of fine work from Bardem and Álvarez, Biutiful is an irritating, oppressive 150-minute dirge, not the step forward Iñárritu's dissolved partnership with Arriaga seemed to promise. Read full review
30
SlateDana StevensFeb 3, 2011
This forced march through a chamber of personal and sociological horrors is difficult to endure but easy to forget. Read full review
20
Time OutDavid FearDec 22, 2010
We've come to expect diminishing returns from the once-promising Mexican director who then gave the world "Babel," but the combination of wallowing humanistic-cinema overkill and outright ridiculousness he lays out here represents a new low. Biutiful is not a tragedy. It's a straight-up travesty. Read full review
10
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonDec 28, 2010
Though its structure may be whittled down in comparison with the earlier works, Biutiful is even more morbidly obese than "Babel" in terms of soggy ideas, elephantine with miserabilist humanism and redemption jibber-jabber. Read full review
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