Eating Raoul

20th Century Fox International Classics | Release Date: March 24, 1982

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

69	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

A terrifically droll satire on both horror movies and American middle-class values. Despite the subject matter, our hero and heroine emerge as genuinely sympathetic characters, which ultimately makes one wonder where the film's true sympathies lie. Read full review

Pauline Kael

This spoofy black comedy is thin-textured and it's sedated; it doesn't have enough going on in it -- not even enough to look at. The nothingness of the movie is supposed to be its droll point, but viewers may experience sensory deprivation.

Gary Arnold

The movie proves a curiously harmless pet of a black comedy: It barks and snaps at you in fitfully funny ways, but it's essentially tame, pipsqueaky and more than a trifle antiquated. [05 Nov 1982, p.D1]

Jay Scott

Eating Raoul is often very funny, but it guns down its targets (hot tubs, taco stands) without revealing anything new about them - it's broader than parody, less pointed than satire - and it crudely manipulates the audience into congratulating itself on its own hipness. [15 Oct 1982]

Roger Ebert

Problem is, it's so laid-back it eventually gets monotonous. If the style and pacing had been as outrageous as the subject matter, we might have had something really amazing here. Read full review