| Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) | Release Date: November 24, 2021 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
31
Mixed:
26
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
Nov 22, 2021iMay 2, 2026
A wobbly and unstoppable juggernaut, barrelling ahead with the brazen confidence of a flashy Italian supercar with its ‘check engine’ light on, House of Gucci is a glorious, trashy crime melodrama based on real life. It pings from tragicomic to tragic to unintentionally funny from moment to moment: sometimes in the same scene.
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Nov 22, 2021
House Of Gucci can switch into camp faster than you can swing a bamboo-handled handbag, and will certainly launch a thousand Gaga memes, an element which is accentuated by the random application of chart bangers in the soundtrack. But it’s also unsettling, entertaining, and really quite unusual: like next year’s fashions from a more extreme house, it grows on you.
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Nov 22, 2021
Gucci might have been a better movie if it had fully committed to the high camp its Blondie-soundtracked trailer promises. It's more serious than that, at least intermittently; a strange melange of too much and not enough. The script also skimps, weirdly, on the actual murder, which is treated mostly as a framing device and felonious afterthought until the final moments. But even a House divided is still more fun than it probably should be: a big messy chef's kiss to money and fashion and above all, movie stars — criming and scheming like they have nothing left to lose, until it's true.
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Nov 22, 2021
By all means, watch it for Gaga doing The Most, or Leto pulling out the most eye-poppingly bad performance of the year with every falsetto lilt of his voice. But be ready for Gucci to try in vain to steady the ship and Get Serious about the all-consuming power of greed, and to yawn when those moments seem to linger too long. Believe me, I wish House of Gucci had a greater share of Lady Gaga death stares and pointed sips of espresso.
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Nov 24, 2021
With House of Gucci, you get a jumble of stories jockeying for screen time, and then you get a supernova blazing at the center of all of it that burns everything superfluous away. If the film is remembered for anything, it’s for being Exhibit A as what a great actor she is. Forget Gucci. Long live the house that Gaga built.
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Nov 22, 2021
There’s something fitting, even respectful, about the sheer number of movie stars that have been pressed into service here. Throwing subtlety to the wind with wild gesticulations and exaggerated Italian accents, they may flirt with and sometimes tumble headlong into stereotype, but they do so with a verve and commitment that, for the better part of 2½ hours, disarms judgment and suspends disbelief.
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ColliderDec 20, 2023
As we’ve seen from Arrested Development and Succession, rich people belittling each other over their petty grievances as they lust for real power is incredibly entertaining, but House of Gucci never seems entirely sure how seriously it should take its characters. It should have just followed Leto’s lead and been a blast.
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Nov 25, 2021
Scott is by no-means a “can’t miss” filmmaker. Although this is far from the worst films he has made, House of Gucci is among his most disappointing. With such a strong cast and the pedigree of a high-profile true crime story, viewers are likely to expect something with more octane. But the movie is too long and starts to spin its wheels long before it reaches its destination.
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RogerEbert.comNov 23, 2021
Scott’s soapy epic—his second cinematic outing this year after the superior (and also partly campy) “The Last Duel”—isn’t exactly a bore, thanks to a number of its actors (like Leto) unafraid to lean into the film’s kitschy tone as well as some fearless moments—like one sensationally go-for-broke sex scene—that meet them at that amplified level.
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Nov 22, 2021
Adam Driver (who has now played a French squire and an Italian fashion heir in consecutive Ridley Scott movies) and Lady Gaga have legit chemistry together, and it’s still a kick to see Al Pacino roaring like a lion in winter. But Hayek and Irons are playing cardboard-thin characters, Leto flounders about as if he’s in a movie all his own, and “House of Gucci” feels coldly calculating when it should have been flush and warm with scandalous sensationalism.
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Nov 22, 2021
We often take a talent like Scott’s for granted. He’s truly gifted in the realm of period pictures, all kinds; next up is a Napoleon epic starring Joaquin Phoenix. In House of Gucci, he sees the material as a cautionary, globe-trotting tale of greed, no less, no more. The movie does the job without diving too far beneath any of its lovely surfaces.
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Nov 23, 2021
[Ridley Scott's] second film in as many months, after The Last Duel, is uneven, overlong and completely over the top, and has characters and plot turns that Marvel and Pixar would reject as ‘a bit much’. The good news is that it is undeniably a proper drama and, for the most part, wildly entertaining.
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Nov 22, 2021
House of Gucci starts with such promise as Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, and Al Pacino give performances that bring out the emotional complexity of the historically dysfunctional Gucci family. But then Ridley Scott becomes infatuated with tracking the fall of the corporation and its familial machinations instead of zeroing in on the more compelling personal implosion of Patrizia and Maurizio. Too much of the narrative is given over to side characters and scenes that are overindulgent, which lessens the potency of the tragic story and our investment in where they all end up.
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The PlaylistNov 22, 2021
Considered as a star-text alone, the film is functionally enjoyable (and will inspire Halloween costumes for the next fifty years), but it’s hard to accept lowered expectations with Scott having delivered a more accomplished, fully-honed film a few brief weeks ago. Caught between the half-willingness to be in on its own joke and the aspiration to seriousness, Scott breaks the cardinal rule of fashion: however you dress, make sure everyone can see exactly what you were going for.
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Nov 23, 2021
House of Gucci takes a seemingly can't-miss combination of talent and material and produces what feels like the knockoff version of a really grand drama. Lady Gaga and Adam Driver bring buzz to director Ridley Scott's dive into the dysfunctional family behind the fashion empire, but in a movie that doesn't rise to the level of delicious trash, winding up largely defined by its stylish accessories.
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Nov 29, 2021
Jared Leto's performance as Maurizio’s cousin, Paolo Gucci, is so over-the-top that it bursts right through the top and swallows up the film whole. Unrecognizable under layers of make-up, speaking in high-pitched, heavily-accented intonations, he’s a live-wire but also a caricature that borders on nasty stereotyping. He out-gagas Gaga (who’s at least partially of Italian ancestry), which is no small feat.
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The Film StageNov 22, 2021
Despite the reasons House of Gucci doesn’t work, none are damning enough to make a bad movie. It’s forgettable, sometimes playing like the sort of cable-TV fare that displaced these tales from the silver screen over the past decade. Yet Scott’s efforts, and especially those of Johnson and Bentivegna, just don’t keep up. And what’s the point of going big if you’re not going to go for it all?
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Nov 22, 2021
Director Ridley Scott and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski lacquer things with the right sheen—and the outfits and hairstyles, if nothing else, will keep you awake for the nearly three-hour running time—but House of Gucci’s promise as a campy, fact-based crime melodrama is only realized when Germanotta is running the show.
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