Frida
Miramax Films | Release Date: October 25, 2002 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
61
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
17
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Sometimes we feel as if the film careens from one colorful event to another without respite, but sometimes it must have seemed to Frida Kahlo as if her life did, too. Read full review
88
New York PostJonathan Foreman
The most effective moments in Taymor's gorgeous, surprisingly romantic Frida are those that evoke the visual world from which Kahlo's work was formed or the paintings themselves, often using clever animation and other special effects. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
The film seems a mad mix of staid PBS bio-drama, flamboyant musical comedy and surreal cartoon nightmare. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
A dynamic portrait of an artist by an artist, one as wry, audacious and erotically charged as its flamboyant subject. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
While the script of Frida struggles at times to be something more than an ordinary and-then-this-happened biography, there's a buoyancy to the direction and acting that make the film special. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Hayek throws herself into this dream Hispanic role with a teeth-clenching gusto. She strikes a potent chemistry with Molina and she gradually makes us believe she is Kahlo. Read full review
80
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Endlessly interesting. It's about people who thought ideas and art mattered, which makes it a rarity today. Read full review
80
VarietyDeborah Young
Salma Hayek makes the character an icon of female independence, courage and nonconformity, forecasting special appeal for women viewers. Read full review
80
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
The bulk of the film showcases some of the best direction of actors this year. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Alfred Molina makes an excellent foil as the easygoing, philandering Rivera, whose public murals were the exact opposite of Frida's private canvases. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Frida, the kaleidoscopic drama based on the life of the Mexican painter/feminist/icon Frida Kahlo, was directed by Julie Taymor, which is the movie's first blessing. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Visually, this movie is exquisite. Narratively, well, that's a more banal story. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Swank and splashy as it is, Frida leaves the lurking suspicion that Taymor might have preferred to stage her pageant as a puppet show. Read full review
70
SlateDavid Edelstein
If you want rich folk-art colors, brainy spectacle, and breezy soap opera, then Frida is the biopic for you. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderMeredity Brody
This is the Classics Illustrated version of Kahlo's story--fun mostly for the sets and the clothes. Read full review
70
SalonStephanie Zacharek
A romance for the deeply romantic, which means that some people will certainly view it as cynical. Read full review
70
The New York TimesDana Stevens
At its best when it forsakes earnest psychological exposition for magic realism, when, instead of trying to explain Kahlo's life, it conjures the moods and sensations that fed her art. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
As directed by Taymor, it's a competent and nicely designed biopic that for all of the director's attempts to link surrealist film imagery with Hayek's depiction of Kahlo somehow manages to be generally lackluster. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
It's too bad that this long-awaited movie didn't go further than faithfully re-creating Kahlo's artwork and her studied look. Her passionate and tragically short life (she died at 47) is ideal Hollywood material, but the audience is left wanting a more in-depth portrait. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Disappointing. Read full review
60
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Smart, willful, and perverse, this Frida is nobody's servant, and the tiny Hayek plays her with head held high. You may want to laugh now and then, but you won't look away. [11 November 2002, p. 195]
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Ultimately, the movie's biggest crime is its inability to convey the delicate, damaged texture of Kahlo's life, but also the triumph of her will over intimidating defeat. Read full review
60
Film ThreatTim Merrill
Frida favors us with plenty of color, a feast of eye candy. As food for the soul, however...there are always her paintings. Read full review
60
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Save for two spectacularly impressionistic sequences, Taymor brings little of that imagination to Frida, a turgid and conventional biopic that skips through the major incidents in Kahlo's life without giving them any special resonance, or even much visual panache. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
A revolutionary life has rarely felt less edgy, or the biography of an iconoclast more bourgeois. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
(Hayek's) performance is far from a disgrace, but it lacks gravitas and soul, a sense of passionate purpose, a hint of obsession. The best Hayek can do with her lovely face is cloud it with worry, but the face of Frida Kahlo demands anguish. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Hamstrung by a script that seems determined to stop at all the big moments in Frida's life (she died in 1954 at age forty-seven) without giving anything time to resonate. Read full review
50
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Why does this chronicle of a passionate life refuse to catch fire? For all of Taymor’s flashy embellishments -- surreal dream sequences, constructivist collages come to life -- it trudges through the Kahlo chronology with the dutiful step of a conventional Hollywood biopic. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Neither terrible nor excellent; Hayek, who also co-produced, may have obsessed for years about this project, but the result is a fairly standard this-happened-and-that-happened biopic. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Isn't terrible. It's just disappointingly superficial -- a movie that has all the elements necessary to be a fascinating, involving character study, but never does more than scratch the surface. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Skips from episode to episode without illuminating the essence of the woman or her art.
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Though occasionally enlivened by fanciful sequences suggesting the surreal power of Kahlo's vivid inner life, it's often mired in the mechanical accretion of incidents that blights most biographical films. Read full review
50
TimeRichard Schickel
Julie Taymor's inventiveness has diminished to a kind of strained cuteness. Everything that makes an artist an artist -- the obsessions, the egotism -- is ignored in favor of upbeat movie conventions. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
All honesty, rebellion and suffering, but no depth. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Mostly, though, Hayek's problem is one of physical miscasting. She's so tiny next to the tall, rotund Molina that she looks like child in their scenes together. And despite a fake caterpillar brow, she's just not believable as a woman bemoaning her disfigurements. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
A domestic melodrama with weak dialogue and biopic cliches. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
There's something oddly moving about the film purely as a love story between two people who were more alike than was good for them, yet somehow stuck it out. What we see in Frida is not Kahlo the painter, but Kahlo the love of Rivera's life, as he was of hers. Read full review
25
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
I doubt if the results would have satisfied Kahlo, whose originality in matters of life, art, and ideas was vastly more far-reaching. Read full review
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