Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
Music Box Films | Release Date: August 31, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
13
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranSep 1, 2011
Unconventional, imaginative, nothing if not audacious, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a portrait of creativity from the inside, a serious yet playful attempt to find an artistic way to tell an emotional truth. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsDec 9, 2011
It's a comedic dramatization with a looming shadow of the surreal. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaNov 10, 2011
In short, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a charmer. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertOct 26, 2011
The movie unreels his musical biography with an unending series of tastes of songs and performances. You may be surprised by how many you recognize. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. MusettoAug 31, 2011
While an iconic figure in France, Gainsbourg isn't a household name here in the States. But that shouldn't stop audiences from enjoying Sfar's good-looking, fanciful film. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneSep 5, 2011
The result is a lively bout between bio-pic and fairy tale. Read full review
70
VarietyJordan MintzerAug 28, 2011
Both evocative and faithful in its depiction of the famed French singer's lascivious life, "Gainsbourg (vie heroique)" offers up a feast of memorable chansons and an almost endless parade of drop-dead-gorgeous muses. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn LevySep 10, 2011
It's never more than an intro to a man who merits volumes. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanAug 31, 2011
At once overly episodic and playfully arty, like a TV movie made by Fellini. Read full review
65
MovielineMichelle OrangeSep 1, 2011
A few shots of full frontal and an actual devil to point to are poor substitutes for exposure and depth of character. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 27, 2011
Inventive and enjoyable but ultimately shallow. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Stephen ColeSep 15, 2011
It's no fun looking after a determined, self-justified alcoholic; or even watching him waste away. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life accepts its subject on his own terms. And the compromise feels like capitulation before its hero's last record spins to a close. The death of a ladies man is pretty grim sport after the ladies have gone. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineBill WeberAug 27, 2011
Handsomely mounted and shot with an eye for nocturnal Parisian mystery by Guillaume Schiffman, Gainsbourg somewhat mercifully peters out after the grande scandale of the provocateur's reggae version of "La Marseillaise," which earned him the wrath of French patriots. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanSep 2, 2011
What the movie lacks in depth it makes up for in surreal humor, and - just as he should - Gainsbourg look-alike Elmosnino seduces us effortlessly. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonSep 1, 2011
What may feel like Mr. Sfar's indulgences are sometimes just that, but one could hardly make an honest movie about Gainsbourg that wasn't as recklessly ambitious as this. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineWade MajorAug 28, 2011
Despite its ultimate lack of profundity, Gainsbourg is certain to still be a sufficiently engaging and meaningful experience to enthrall the initiated while stimulating the curiosity of the uninitiated. Read full review
60
EmpireAndrew MaleAug 28, 2011
Eric Elmosnino is terrific as the louche French icon in Joann Sfar's vivid biopic. Shame about that second hour. Read full review
58
NPRIan BuckwalterSep 2, 2011
Sfar's imaginative direction and the film's lush visual sense, along with a hugely charismatic performance by Eric Elmosnino in the title role, do manage to elevate much of the formula elements. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasAug 30, 2011
What's surprising, and ultimately disappointing, about Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is the degree to which Sfar allows biopic obligations to smother his more whimsical instincts. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovNov 3, 2011
An excellently cast biopic about yet another self-destructive genius who burnt out but will never fade away – at least not in France, or wherever cigarettes, alcohol, and sex are still allowed. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 27, 2011
Alas, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life loses steam and grows more perfunctory as it wears on. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottAug 30, 2011
The puppets and the music make Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life engaging, but it is also visually hectic and lacks either the dramatic intensity or the arresting insight that might have lifted it out of the pedestrian realm of the admiring biopic. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. HobermanAug 30, 2011
The movie turns terminally wearisome and even anti-climactic with the triumph of the brain-lodging "Je T'aime" (which, alone among the movie's numbers, is heard in its original version) and Gainsbourg's descent into alcoholic dissolution. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterBernard BesserglikAug 28, 2011
The movie is too much an act of hero-worship for there to be any critical distance. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerSep 2, 2011
His rise from a marginalized Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied Paris to his chain-smoking fame as the composer of such Euro-hits as "Je t'Aime … Moi Non Plus" is presented as one long, hallucinatory jag, revealing far less about Gainsbourg, I would imagine, than about Sfar. Read full review
40
Time OutAlison WillmoreAug 30, 2011
Despite the attention the film pays to the divide between the man as the ungainly, loving second-gen immigrant versus the boozy provocateur, it's not a portrait of much psychological depth. Read full review
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