Detachment
Tribeca Film | Release Date: March 16, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
5
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMar 12, 2012
It is the greatest biblio-climax of any film since "Fahrenheit 451," although Truffaut's prayer was that reading might yet survive calamity and carry the torch of the civilized. Detachment snufffs out that faith; books it warns us, are the first thing to go. [19 March 2012, p.91]
75
NPRElla TaylorMar 19, 2012
Nobody's idea of "Mr. Holland's Opus," but it winds up in a similar place, more or less. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversMar 15, 2012
Adrien Brody deserves superlatives for his acting in the alternately mesmerizing and maddening Detachment. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanMar 14, 2012
When it stays in the classroom, Detachment is a scrappy testament - to the futility of even trying to reach students who are cut off from the possibilities of knowledge, and to the way that our teachers are slowly being driven nuts. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleMar 22, 2012
A movie you keep expecting to fizzle because of its punching-the-air gracelessness, but there's something weirdly effective about the artistic desperation, which includes inserts of chalkboard animation and to-the-camera testimonials. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckMar 12, 2012
Adrien Brody, delivering his finest performance since "The Pianist," plays the central role of the disaffected Henry Barthes. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'HehirMar 12, 2012
People will either love Detachment or hate it, and either way it provides powerful testimony to the unrivaled passion and undiminished craft of director Kaye, whose notoriety in the film industry is matched by his near-total invisibility to the general public. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubSam AdamsMar 14, 2012
For all its untrammeled excesses - and Kaye has proved that he'd sooner torpedo his own career than accept a little constructive trammeling - Detachment is almost forcibly moving, body-slamming its audience into submission. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenMay 3, 2012
Ultimately, Detachment invites us to feel precisely what it warns against – detached. Read full review
60
The New York TimesStephen HoldenMay 17, 2012
The shriller its didacticism, the more unhinged it becomes. But even at its most ludicrous - when it is shouting into your ear - its sheer audacity grabs your attention. Read full review
60
MovielineAlison WillmoreMar 15, 2012
Comes across like the creation of a precocious student. I don't mean that to be a damning critique, though Detachment is a mesmerizing misfire -- it's just that it has the uncomplicated earnestness and hyperbolic melodrama of teenage poetry. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierMar 15, 2012
It's nice to see righteous anger in a movie. If only the education drama Detachment knew what to do with it. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfMar 13, 2012
The movie is one big scream, clichéd and hardly credible as an oblique call to civility. Read full review
40
VarietyRonnie ScheibMar 12, 2012
Scripter Lund, himself an ex-teacher, delivers a story that lacks nuance, and mixes badly with Kaye's impatient edits, Dutch angles and extreme close-ups. Read full review
38
New York PostKyle SmithMar 16, 2012
[Director Kaye's] dedication to the material is admirable, but his tactic of following one dismal development with an even more depressing one comes to seem monotonous and pointless. Read full review
30
TimeMary PolsMar 22, 2012
I didn't believe a word of the film and found myself feeling nothing but (I'm sure this wasn't Kaye's point) detachment. Read full review
30
Village VoiceMark HolcombMar 13, 2012
Movies about teachers are flypaper for overblown armchair crusaderism, and this overbearingly cynical attempt gets my vote for worst offender yet. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMay 10, 2012
The movie has an undeniable visceral power. It is also a loud, grating wallow in dime-store despair, a cheap and hollow button-puncher. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedMar 13, 2012
Detachment drives a coffin nail through a noble profession with such ruthless virulence that it makes no point at all. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineBill WeberMar 11, 2012
Endng in risible bathos, Tony Kaye's urban high school melodrama is all about the cute teacher's crises and the girls who love him. Read full review
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