Maria
Netflix | Release Date: November 27, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 50 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
20
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
NMEJordan BassettNov 1, 2024
Maria is both winningly camp and a little too po-faced for its own good, apparently unsure if it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek or deadly serious. Read full review
60
BBCNicholas BarberAug 29, 2024
Throughout the film, various people draw a distinction between "Maria" the woman and "La Callas" the superhuman diva. Its title notwithstanding, Maria is definitely about "La Callas". Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 29, 2024
Maria bears many of the hallmarks of Larraín’s lavish empathy and filmmaking skill. Yet the movie, in contrast, is driven by a dramatic fatalism that does it little favor. Read full review
60
Screen RantAlex HarrisonAug 29, 2024
There's plenty to admire in Maria, and in Jolie's performance, but my connection to certain scenes shouldn't be mistaken for my being emotionally engrossed. In fact, I typically felt kept at a distance. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubBrianna ZiglerOct 3, 2024
The dueling personas of Jolie and Callas adds a dimension of time-spanning kinship to Maria that it might not have had if it had starred an actress with less publicized personal baggage. Saddled with the pasts of two world-renowned stars, Maria is more like an emblem of the burden of fame than a dissection of the humanity at its core. Read full review
58
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossAug 29, 2024
By creating — and persisting — on this on-the-nose parallel between the tragedy of opera and the one of Callas’s life, the duo sees this woman solely through the tragic value of her woes, denying her talent and her craft from the light that is true human connection, built not only through shared griefs but the deep understanding of one another that only great art can promote. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonDec 5, 2024
As the plot swings haphazardly between drug-induced hallucinations and reality, we lose trust in what we are seeing. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Aparita BhandariDec 5, 2024
By focusing his lens on the personality of the diva, as opposed to her artistry, Larrain doesn’t truly give us insight into what made Maria into “La Callas.” We get glimpses of the tragedies and scandals in her life that inspired and informed her powerful – and often divisive – vocals. But we don’t understand the artistry behind the voice. Read full review
50
ABC NewsPeter TraversDec 1, 2024
Angelina Jolie fires up the best actress Oscar race as opera legend Maria Callas, but director Pablo Larraín's muffled cinematic take on the prima donna’s last days commits the cardinal sin that Callas never did as an artist by leaving us on the outside looking in. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonNov 28, 2024
I wish Larraín had cut Callas down to size more. He’s too protective of his fellow artist to slosh around in the fury that fueled her art. Callas could sing three octaves, but the film is mostly one note. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineKyle TurnerOct 2, 2024
Between Jackie, Spencer, and, now, Maria, Pablo Larraín has thrice committed the cardinal sin of taking a female icon of the 20th century and, in an attempt to hold a mirror up to her multitudes, flattened her into the equivalent of a kitschy postage stamp. Read full review
50
ColliderMartin TsaiAug 30, 2024
Pablo Larraín's Maria is a one-note exploration of another public figure that just makes the same points over and over again. Read full review
50
Vanity FairRichard LawsonAug 29, 2024
Maria is the thinnest of the three, psychologically facile and overly mannered. There is something arbitrary, unspecific about the film. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 29, 2024
Maria is a movie made with great respect, almost adulation, but very little that qualifies as real feeling. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreAug 29, 2024
Despite the obvious effort that went into the making of Maria, there’s so little life. For a movie built around a performance meant to be lauded for its bravery, there’s no sense of anything risked. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonDec 12, 2024
Screenwriter Steven Knight has much to answer for in Callas being quite so shrill, but Ms. Jolie is unable to turn her storied character—one of opera’s most important and influential performers, a woman of polarizing voice, scandalous history and tempestuous personality—into something recognizably human. Read full review
40
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonDec 12, 2024
What we get here isn’t interesting, and it’s not told in an interesting way. Read full review
40
The New YorkerRichard BrodyNov 25, 2024
Maria gets lost in a tangle of clichéd bio-pic narrative stuffing, and runs superficially through the protagonist’s reminiscences by way of an embarrassing contrivance. Read full review
40
The Daily BeastBarry LevittAug 30, 2024
Maria is a swirling, fragmented recollection of Callas’ life, one that leaves things frustratingly on the surface. Read full review
40
The TimesKevin MaherAug 29, 2024
This is a film fed by, and consistently cutting to, the operas that defined its subject. Yet there is not a single moment that is emotionally operatic. It is wilfully, wearily flat. Read full review
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