Mapplethorpe
Samuel Goldwyn Films | Release Date: March 1, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
44
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
7
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzApr 2, 2021
The thing that makes the film stand out is the way it shows artists relating to each other and to their work. It's rare to see a movie about creative people that accurately captures the way they'll size each other up on first meeting and then, once they've determined that the other person is serious, proceed immediately to the sharing of influences and the granular discussion of theory and technique. [2021 Director's Cut] Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 8, 2019
The best we can hope to get from a movie of this kind is an interesting story, a hint of the artist’s work, some factual accuracy and surfaces that make sense. We get that from Mapplethorpe. And while Smith can’t show us Mapplethorpe’s depths, he can suggest them, enough so that, if anyone wants to know more, they can consult the ultimate source — Mapplethorpe’s own work. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesGary GoldsteinFeb 28, 2019
Director Ondi Timoner, who co-wrote with Mikko Alanne (based on a screenplay by Bruce Goodrich), has crafted a stylish, evocative, absorbing snapshot of creative expression, artistic ambition, sexuality and eroticism. Read full review
70
Film ThreatLorry KiktaFeb 27, 2019
Overall, I would recommend seeing this film if you are a fan of Mapplethorpe’s work, the New York art world, or of Matt Smith. He gives a bravura performance which outshines everything and everyone on screen. Read full review
70
Screen DailyDavid D'ArcyApr 27, 2018
The 12-year project – commissioned by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation – is evidence that Timoner, who made documentaries before, can craft a nuanced dramatic feature. Read full review
63
New York PostSara StewartMar 1, 2019
There are two things that make the flawed Mapplethorpe worth a watch: Matt Smith’s dedicated performance, and a reverent inclusion of so much of the artist’s work. Read full review
60
TheWrapDan CallahanApr 27, 2018
Even if budgetary restraints sometimes keep Timoner from fully capturing the time she is re-creating, nothing holds Smith back from making Mapplethorpe come alive again, in every sense. Read full review
58
The Film StageJohn FinkMay 2, 2018
Fronted by a fine performance by Matt Smith, Mapplethorpe plays it safe with a subject that’s anything but. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 30, 2021
The film is a choppy series of sketches and snapshots that don’t really take us inside the man’s head. [2021 Director's Cut] Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMar 1, 2019
Mapplethorpe doesn’t linger long enough to have a present tense. It hits its marks and breezes on. It’s not inept — there are few bad scenes. It doesn’t risk enough to be bad. Read full review
40
Rolling StonePeter TraversFeb 27, 2019
What’s missing are the moments in between that actually make up a life and give it emotional resonance. Read full review
40
VarietyPeter DebrugeApr 27, 2018
To rob Mapplethorpe of his controversy is to strip the movie of its dramatic conflict. By doing so, the script (co-written with Mikko Alanne) reduces to a rather banal biopic, reenacting how a scrappy outsider achieved unconventional success. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterKeith UhlichApr 27, 2018
This is, in abstract, a bold and brilliant performance, an act of possession, really, and Smith never personally steps wrong in the film’s 96 minutes. But his work, sadly, is continuously undermined by everything surrounding him, beginning with a script, written by Timoner and Mikko Alanne, that frustratingly sticks to the then-this-happened conventions of a standard biopic. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comNick AllenMar 1, 2019
A stunningly drab take on the life and legacy of a photographer who merged pornography with grace, Mapplethorpe doesn’t have an artistic signature of its own, so much as a name it doesn’t live up to. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineRichard Scott LarsonFeb 24, 2019
In Mapplethorpe, the ultimate purpose of the film seems to be the reductive portrayal of the artist as yet another tormented queer destroyed by his tendencies toward vice. Read full review
37
Washington PostMark JenkinsMar 13, 2019
If the new biopic Mapplethorpe presents this transgressive vision is vivid detail — and it does — that’s only because it includes so many of Mapplethorpe’s pictures. Everything else in the film is timid and pedestrian. Read full review
33
IndieWireDavid EhrlichApr 27, 2018
This runaway train of a biopic renders an iconoclast in the most generic of terms, straining Mapplethorpe’s brief life into a series of bullet-points that feed into each other with all the drama of a Wikipedia page, and a fraction of the context. Read full review
30
The New York TimesGlenn KennyFeb 28, 2019
Mapplethorpe, directed by Ondi Timoner, is a fictionalized biography of the photographer that is most alive when it’s putting its subject’s pictures on the screen, which it does often. And should have done more, because the movie is otherwise as timid as its subject was bold. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 6, 2019
Maybe if Mapplethorpe hadn’t been commissioned by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, it would have been a batter movie. As it is, this sour, undernourished biopic is a disappointment just shy of a disaster — a portrait of a boundary-destroying artist that stays well within the safe borders of convention. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedFeb 28, 2019
For a subject of so much titillating eroticism, the script (co-authored by the director and Mikko Alanne) is as dull as navel lint, the lighting is like an undeveloped hospital X-ray and the director has no idea how to move actors around in frame to make them feel like anything more than talking corpses. Read full review
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