Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
Kino Lorber | Release Date: November 24, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
2
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 18, 2018
It fascinates both as film history and as a sobering reminder of how little credit a woman like Lamarr received, even at the peak of her popularity. Read full review
83
IndieWireSteve GreeneMay 18, 2018
This film manages to celebrate the spirit that stood in opposition to limit her to what she looked like on a poster. It’s a reminder that, even for world-famous icons, it’s pointless to reduce people to a single piece of notoriety. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMar 5, 2018
This moving, surprising documentary offers a tale of Hollywood pigeonholing that feels particularly timely. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 1, 2018
Certainly the details have been known and written about here and there, but director Alexandra Dean assembles them in an entertaining, and at times heartbreaking and infuriating, film. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeNov 28, 2017
First-time director Dean does an excellent job of marshalling old source material, setting the scene for an account of Lamarr's life on- and off-screen. Read full review
80
Village VoiceChuck WilsonNov 28, 2017
Recognition (and compensation) proved elusive in Lamarr’s lifetime, but in this marvelous documentary, a brilliant woman — “I’m a very simple, complicated person” — finally gets her due. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla DargisNov 28, 2017
Ms. Dean relates Lamarr’s ventures, those onscreen and off, with savvy and narrative snap, fluidly marshaling a mix of original interviews and archival material that includes film clips, home movies and other footage. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonMar 7, 2018
The actress had legendary power to charm men and women, and we suspect one of them may be Bombshell director Alexandra Dean. Early on, we hear biographers and fans tell us about something that “probably” happened, or that “may be apocryphal,” but it all becomes part of Bombshell‘s print-the-legend approach. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 7, 2018
"Bombshell” tells the story of a triumphant and consequential life. And there’s more: Everybody interviewed on camera about her apparently really liked her, especially her children. That’s no small achievement. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrFeb 28, 2018
The penultimate moments of “Bombshell” are moving, re-creating the lost Vienna of Kiesler’s childhood and overlaying the voice of the aging Lamarr, interviewed by an Austrian news team in 1970, as she speaks of never being understood in America. Adrift in the Land of the Lotus Eaters, she spent a lifetime being looked at and never once being seen. Read full review
75
The Film StageJared MobarakNov 28, 2017
Lamarr wasn’t without demons, but to look at the entirety of her life in context along its volatile trajectory of highs and lows is to understand she was a victim of chauvinistic times. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 25, 2017
But every few years, something like “Bombshell” comes along to remind us, as we look up her credits on IMDb on our iPhone or Droid, that we should never under-estimate the great beauties among us. A lot of them are a lot more than just a pretty face. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 7, 2017
What makes "Bombshell" intriguing is not just Lamarr's gift for invention, it's also what a fiery individualist she was, someone who had no regrets about her eventful life ("You learn from everything"), not even its racy, tabloid elements. Read full review
70
TheWrapInkoo KangNov 21, 2017
It’s a totally serviceable, if disappointingly uncinematic, film about a singular celebrity. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerDec 21, 2017
If the storytelling technique is a little prosaic, the subject matter is more than sufficiently engrossing. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanFeb 27, 2018
Lamarr had been blessed — or, perhaps more appropriately, cursed — with leading an interesting life, and Dean’s film seems both too conventional and too shallow for its subject, who seems as hard to pigeonhole, at times, as to understand. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Gayle MacDonaldNov 24, 2017
Never taken seriously in her lifetime – and manipulated by powerful men like studio mogul Louis B. Mayer (sound familiar?) – Lamar never got the recognition she deserved for inventing what became a cornerstone of the wireless technology used today in WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. Read full review
60
EmpireHelen O'HaraMar 12, 2018
A life story packed with incident means that this sometimes rushes past events that would be formative for anyone else, but equally means that Lamarr’s life story is never, ever dull. Read full review
60
VarietyDennis HarveyNov 30, 2017
Too much of “Bombshell” skims over Lamarr’s more troubling and troubled aspects to paint her in somewhat stock terms as the victim of keep-her-on-that-pedestal misogyny. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineClayton DillardNov 19, 2017
The film curiously steers toward surmising Hedy Lamarr's psychological state as it pertained to love and pleasure. Read full review
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