Don Jon
Relativity Media | Release Date: September 27, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
7
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 26, 2013
Gordon-Levitt won't take safe for an answer. So Don Jon tends to stumble as it finds its feet. Still, you leave this movie feeling had at instead of had. The experience is elating. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanSep 25, 2013
Gordon-Levitt proves a natural filmmaker, nimbly staging Jon's highly amusing Catholic confessions, along with porn montages that mimic the dopamine-charged editing of "Requiem for a Dream." He also gets a terrific performance out of Tony Danza as Jon's hilariously blinkered brute of a dad. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezApr 11, 2013
A beguiling romantic comedy with a heart, soul and pulse that will pleasure you for a full 90 minutes with hardly breaking a sweat. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonCatherine BrayNov 12, 2013
As a director, Gordon-Levitt demonstrates considerable technical flair through stylistic flourishes and coaxes great performances out of his co-stars, while he remains centre stage throughout. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeySep 27, 2013
Who would have thought one of the most amusing and oddly insightful romantic comedies would be built around the power and the potent pull of porn? Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla DargisSep 26, 2013
[A] deceptively sincere movie about masculinity and its discontents that Mr. Gordon-Levitt, making a fine feature directing debut, shapes into a story about a young man's moral education. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanSep 26, 2013
I’ll take messy, daring creativity like Gordon-Levitt’s over a formulaic fantasy any day. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzSep 25, 2013
A sharp turn on the romantic comedy, a movie about flawed people doing flawed things, often in funny fashion. Read full review
80
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekSep 24, 2013
It's a comedy that moves with a sense of purpose, as Gordon-Levitt does in the title role. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickSep 30, 2013
Short, sweet, raunchy and often screamingly funny. Read full review
75
NPRBob MondelloSep 27, 2013
Gordon-Levitt keeps things riotous for the film's first hour, and if he eases into an ending that's a little Hollywood-standard, after having so much fun tweaking form and content, I'm guessing audiences will cut him some slack. Read full review
75
Washington PostStephanie MerrySep 26, 2013
Don Jon is a disarming film that proves Gordon-Levitt’s deftness both behind the camera and in front of a computer screen, writing. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigSep 26, 2013
Johansson gives one of her best performances as the bossy, gum-chewing Jersey girl determined to change Jon into her image of a romantic hero. Tony Danza and Glenne Headly are hilarious as Jon's parents. Gordon-Levitt proves he can act, write and direct with equal dexterity. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSep 26, 2013
Don Jon deserves praise for wearing its message lightly and yet for daring to present such a lecture in today's Internet-drenched environment. Gordon-Levitt may be blithe in discussing pornography, but his movie nonetheless asserts that porn is addictive and destructive, that it intrudes on intimacy, and that it short-circuits the capacities for interaction and also, ultimately, for pleasure. That's a serious subject and a committed viewpoint, handled with wit and intelligence. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 26, 2013
Gordon-Levitt the writer-director delivers some great laugh lines and a couple of nifty plot pivots, and Gordon-Levitt the actor gives a winning performance. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrSep 26, 2013
What Don Jon is, surprisingly, is honest. R-rating aside, it should be required viewing for every 15-year-old boy on the planet. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaSep 26, 2013
Don Jon is about a man's unwitting search for intimacy, for real connection in a world where everyone is connected - by social media, by the Internet, by TV and computer and smartphone screens. That's not exactly an original idea. But Gordon-Levitt goes at it with gusto, and style. Give the guy some props. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 26, 2013
Gordon-Levitt wears three hats (director, writer, actor) and all of them fit. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezSep 26, 2013
Don Jon is nominally a love triangle between a woman, a man and his laptop, but the movie is much more thoughtful and substantial than that, and it takes a compassionate and humane approach to all of its characters, even when they’re at their most despicable. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 26, 2013
Behind the camera, Gordon-Levitt shows serious promise. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreSep 25, 2013
In Don Jon Gordon-Levitt hasn’t made a great movie. But he has made a fun one, short and sweet, with a third act punch that is so to-the-point it’ll take your breath away. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianJamie S. RichSep 24, 2013
Don Jon is raunchy. The dialogue’s frank and much of what we see is explicit enough to make this a film exclusively for grown-ups. Luckily, the emotional places Gordon-Levitt takes his characters are pretty grown-up, too. Read full review
75
Film.comWilliam GossApr 11, 2013
A funny, sly directorial debut Read full review
70
The DissolveGenevieve KoskiSep 25, 2013
Don Jon is a continuously entertaining and fitfully provocative first-time effort from the longtime actor. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'HehirSep 25, 2013
This is a sweet, lively and funny movie rather than a fully realized one, but it makes clear that Gordon-Levitt has a natural feeling for cinema and should do more of it. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 23, 2013
The movie is a broad ethnic comedy, but there’s nothing broad about the wicked-smart way it’s executed. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeApr 11, 2013
Gordon-Levitt’s script can be a bit on-the-nose at times, but that’s an indulgence easily forgiven in a debut feature, and this ensemble winningly sells the movie’s tricky tonal mix. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnSep 27, 2013
Well made as it is, Don Jon suffers from a half-baked scenario that never manages to make its characters as intriguing as the problems that afflict its protagonist. It's a movie that shows better than it tells, even as it leaves much up to the imagination. Read full review
67
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallSep 25, 2013
Don Jon is so friskily risque, with teasing glimpses of what turns Jon on and frank dialogue to match, that you don't notice the movie is stuck in a rut until Julianne Moore shows up late, offering Jon an older, wiser perspective on sex and relationships. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceySep 27, 2013
What becomes increasingly apparent is that Gordon-Levitt hasn’t exactly decided what Jon’s problem is, in a character that seems partly an expression of male wish fulfilment. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsSep 26, 2013
Gordon-Levitt is a victim of his own success here. He plays such a convincing cad that we don’t believe or invest in his redemption. Read full review
60
The GuardianJeremy KayApr 11, 2013
A fun, occasionally flabby romp that should find its audience. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerSep 27, 2013
True love beckons in the guise of a dingbat played by Julianne Moore and all is right with the world. As Jon’s father, a man whose lifeblood is yelling, Tony Danza is very funny. He makes you understand what his son is escaping from. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 25, 2013
To Gordon-Levitt’s credit, he neatly sidesteps the moralizing message his film seems to be building toward. The hero’s problem is not that he jerks off too much; as articulated by widowed, pot-smoking classmate Julianne Moore — the only real human being onscreen — it’s that he’s never actually connected to another person through sex. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternSep 26, 2013
I like Mr. Gordon-Levitt a lot as an actor, and I wish him only the best in his future work as a filmmaker. There is, however, the matter of this particular movie, an overheated disquisition on the pleasures and limitations of masturbation. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenSep 25, 2013
Although the film’s character portraits are vividly drawn, they remain largely one-dimensional. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedSep 24, 2013
He (Gordon-Levitt) can act, and there’s a possibility he can also direct, but there’s no evidence in Don Jon that he can do both at the same time. Read full review
40
Time OutKeith UhlichSep 24, 2013
As with many a first feature, Gordon-Levitt’s so-so directorial debut is pumped up with ambition. The early scenes, heavy on caricature, promise to puncture much of the cocky illusions surrounding modern relationships. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonSep 27, 2013
A sex comedy that just lays there and expects you to do all the work. Gordon-Levitt's direction is repetitive and dry, and his screenplay is a collage of badly cut out pieces from other movies. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerSep 11, 2013
Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut does for porn-dependence what Shame did for sex addiction by offering a surface-level look at the effects of its specific pathology on its lead male character. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyApr 11, 2013
Crude, repetitive and rigorously single-minded, the popular actor’s writing and directing debut lays it all on a bit thick, as the few points the film has to make are underscored time and time again. Read full review
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