By the Sea
Universal Pictures | Release Date: November 13, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
15
Negative:
11
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesRebecca KeeganNov 12, 2015
As a writer, Jolie Pitt is better at ideas than dialogue, much of which is leaden here. But the characters' behaviors feel true. Read full review
80
TimeJoe NeumaierNov 14, 2015
Jolie Pitt, in her third film as a director, infuses her original screenplay with a sparseness reminiscent of Hemingway’s tales of mislaid love and Michelangelo Antonioni’s cinematic alienation. But By the Sea is its own lovely creation, deadly serious about how grief divides, conquers and possibly unites. Read full review
75
HitfixDrew McWeenyNov 11, 2015
It sounds far sexier, just based on the synopsis, than it actually plays, though, so hopefully people aren't sold the wrong movie. For those in the mood for a throwback to the doomed romanticism of mid'60s art films, this feels like about as sincere an homage as anyone could produce. Read full review
75
The PlaylistKatie WalshNov 6, 2015
Jolie Pitt’s insistence on creating a piece that reflects the harsh inner state of a person suffering to understand herself as a wife and as a woman in the world is commendable, and fascinating in her growth as a filmmaker. Read full review
70
The New YorkerRichard BrodyAug 19, 2016
It’s a romantic, erotic drama that’s told with an unusual blend of rapture and coldness, of overwhelming yearning and clinical detachment — and, above all, the movie has images that go far beyond the recording of performances and the framing of action in order to make a melancholy and mysterious visual music. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriNov 12, 2015
You keep watching not just because she and Brad and the Mediterranean are beautiful, but also because small, surprising details start to take on great importance. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisNov 12, 2015
At first luxurious blush it’s a jet-setting marital melodrama, one of those he-said, she-said (and wept) encounter sessions decked with designer shades, to-die-for digs and millionaire tears. More interestingly, the movie, which Ms. Jolie Pitt wrote and directed, is a knowing or at least a ticklishly amusing demonstration of celebrity and its relay of gazes from one of the most looked-at women in the world. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenNov 18, 2015
This movie won’t be for everyone; you’ll need to dive back into European arthouse cinema from the Sixties to find anything quite like it. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayNov 11, 2015
If it stumbles when it seeks our sympathy, it thrives when it's exploiting our fascination with the surface of things, and all that's unknowable underneath. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyDec 17, 2015
Sincerity isn’t the film’s problem; it’s more a question of mileage. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfNov 13, 2015
By the Sea is a so-so film, but its meandering stretches of decaying glamour make it about 10 times more interesting than most Oscar bait. Read full review
60
The GuardianNigel M SmithNov 6, 2015
By the Sea’s uncompromising nature is its most admirable asset. It’s a vanity project that’s difficult to love, but alluring to unpack. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianMarc MohanNov 19, 2015
It's beautifully photographed, but pretentious, overlong and trite. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeNov 12, 2015
Jolie and Pitt are both, without a doubt, very good actors, and in the film’s rare moments of vulnerability, their fights and reconciliations contain a seed of devastating emotional truth that speaks to the pair’s talent and real-life bond. But those moments are suffocated under long, dreadfully dull sequences where everyone poses artfully and says very little. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattNov 11, 2015
Jolie Pitt, who also wrote and directed, shows a lot of skin (her own and her cast’s) without ever really getting under it. Misery doesn’t just love good-looking company; it needs an emotional center and a satisfying narrative arc, too. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrNov 12, 2015
This prompts the perverse thought that By the Sea may simply exist as a movie for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to watch. It’s two hours of vacation, voyeurism, and celebrity marriage therapy, and you and I aren’t actually invited. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 12, 2015
In this her third feature as a director, Jolie once again shows a marked talent for the visual aspects of storytelling. Her shot selection is impeccable and her compositions are artful without being self-consciousness. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 11, 2015
The result is something like a weepy Lifetime melodrama told in the languorous, self-indulgent style of European art cinema, as if Michelangelo Antonioni or Bernardo Bertolucci had wound up in debt to multiple ex-wives and were forced to churn out straight-to-cable movies, circa 1986. Read full review
50
VarietyJustin ChangNov 6, 2015
By the Sea always offers something to tickle the eye and ear, even as it leaves the heart and mind coolly unstirred. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonNov 6, 2015
Roland and Vanessa simply aren’t sufficiently compelling to provoke us to fill in the blanks. Pitt brings his usual weathered charm, and Jolie Pitt makes her character’s all-consuming melancholy occasionally ravishing, but there’s not enough depth underneath. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 13, 2015
Both Jolie Pitt and Pitt have demonstrated their chops in far better movies. I suspect the problem here is that there was no one around to tell them, “Please don’t. Please. Don’t.” Read full review
40
EmpireTerri WhiteDec 14, 2015
A Sheltering Sky-lite romantic travelogue that, despite its two leads, lacks any real spark. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzNov 25, 2015
Jolie Pitt is going for a European cinema vibe here, but all the smoking, drinking and speaking in French can’t disguise the fact that there isn’t a lot going on here. Filmmakers reserve every right to demand patience from their audiences, but they have to provide a worthwhile payoff in the end. By the Sea simply doesn’t. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyNov 6, 2015
There's no catharsis at the end from the journey taken, just relief that it's over. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 17, 2015
It’s a vacuous affair, dull performances trapped in duller writing, ironically funny only when you take the writer’s words to be the screenwriter’s admission of guilt. Read full review
37
Washington PostStephanie MerryNov 12, 2015
By the Sea is dazzlingly gorgeous, as are its stars. But peeling back layer upon layer of exquisite ennui reveals nothing but emptiness, sprinkled with stilted sentiments. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 12, 2015
The psychodynamics may well be sound, but the problem is that Léa and François, whether in or out of bed, are much more appealing than Roland and Vanessa. The camera is in the wrong room. Read full review
30
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonNov 10, 2015
The film doesn't demonstrate belief in much of anything except that audiences must be so desperate for a peek into these stars' private lives that we'll invest energy in their mopey fictional counterparts, who can't even invest in themselves. Read full review
25
St. Louis Post-DispatchGail PenningtonNov 19, 2015
In addition to starring, Jolie Pitt wrote and directed By the Sea. She has given herself relatively little dialogue, but stuck her husband with lines like “Stop acting like this!” and “You resist happiness!” Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedNov 18, 2015
Looking lovely and catatonic, Angelina Jolie, who now calls herself Angelina Jolie Pitt, has come up with an exercise in self-indulgence for herself and husband Brad that is so boring it defies description. By the Sea is not only a dog; it’s a dog that’s got fleas. Read full review
25
New York PostLou LumenickNov 13, 2015
A decade later, these tabloid hall-of-famers are finally back to share the screen in By the Sea — glumly emoting in a pretentiously arty, humorless vanity production that drags along for two hours that feel like at least four. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 13, 2015
Writer-director Angelina Jolie's attempt to emulate European art cinema is a slow, sodden, stupefyingly dull take on a 1970s marriage gone bad. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comPeter SobczynskiNov 13, 2015
It is baffling to discover that for her third directorial effort, By the Sea, she has produced a film that is such a borderline unendurable exercise in vapid self-indulgence that it almost feels like an exceptionally straight-faced parody of empty-headed star vehicles. Read full review
25
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperNov 12, 2015
Writer-director-star Angelina Jolie Pitt’s By the Sea is awfully pretty and mostly dreadful. It’s pretty dreadful. Read full review
25
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeNov 6, 2015
If By the Sea weren’t so aggressively humorless, it might almost qualify as camp, so unsuccessful is its pursuit of weighty drama. Unintentional laughs are hard to come by here; instead, there are yawns aplenty. Read full review
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