Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
DreamWorks Distribution | Release Date: December 29, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
10
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is a dark, dark, dark film, focused on an obsession so complete and lonely it shuts out all other human experience. You may not savor it, but you will not stop watching it, in horror and fascination. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Most horror movies try to show us the man inside the monster, so we'll empathize with his moral dilemmas or feel his suffering. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer shows us a man who is all monster, whose colossal amorality makes him a potential Messiah or menace to humanity. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The film is downright repulsive in places, and otherwise pushes the envelope for an art film, but it's a dazzling piece of filmmaking that wins us over with its boldness and artistry. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
Whishaw's oddly charismatic performance makes the despicable Grenouille into an almost sympathetic antihero. The rather astonishing finale will likely have audiences either howling in derision or ardently dissecting afterward. And it must have given the bluenoses at the MPAA fits. Read full review
80
EmpireDan Jolin
The odd conclusion renders it somewhat oblique, but Perfume is a feast for the senses. Read full review
80
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
Tykwer makes of all this murder and madness a concoction of improbable beauty and rare artistry. "Perfume" is not just the finest film of his career but easily one of the past year's most accomplished. Read full review
75
PremiereEthan Alter
Perfume is sure to annoy as many moviegoers as it entertains, but at least even the naysayers would find it difficult to argue that film is nothing if not a departure from the ordinary. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
This is a crazy, gorgeous, disturbing, darkly comic horror story about an early-18th-century Frenchman born in a Paris fish market without any odor of his own but with a sense of smell that would make a pack of bloodhounds wail with envy. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, crosses over from thriller into magic realism for a lavishly staged climax that's a bit much. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Perfume misses some of the subtler base notes of Süskind's creepier, more self-aware original, but Whishaw and Tykwer blend the movie into something quite heady in its own bottle. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
It is to director Tykwer's credit that, although you never come close to understanding Jean-Baptiste, you don't turn your nose up at him, either. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterBernard Besserglik
Long regarded as unfilmable, Patrick Suskind's 1985 novel "Perfume" has finally reached the screen in a blockbuster production that succeeds reasonably well in achieving what many said was beyond the scope of cinema: conveying the world of scent and smell. Read full review
70
VarietyDerek Elley
The seductive, sensory prose of Patrick Suskind's bestseller, "Perfume," reaches the screen with loads of visual panache but only intermittent magic. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
A memorable and outrageous movie, but one more likely to be remembered as a massive folly than a whopping success. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Deeply flawed though it may be, Perfume is a challenging motion picture, and one whose impressions are not easily shaken. Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The film, though admirably ambitious, is resolutely earthbound, mired in ick and slime and never more wooden than in the delirious climax. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Perfume is a pitch-black period epic of squalor and enterprise. Read full review
60
Village VoiceEd Halter
It's a noble experiment in pushing the limits of cinema, but Tykwer never achieves true profundity. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Perfume is ultimately an unmistakable failure, but there's a strange majesty to its epic overreaching. It can be faulted for many things, but not for lacking the courage of its convictions. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Weaves a sensual spell of extraordinary delicacy, then sustains it -- up to a point.
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
By the time Perfume arrives at its ridiculous mass orgy, staged at the gallows where Grenouille is supposed to meet his end, you really would rather see him meet his end than endure a ridiculous mass orgy. Read full review
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
It's simultaneously arty, arcane and nasty. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and cowriters Andrew Birkin and Bernd Eichinger preserve some of the novel's storytelling flair, and Dustin Hoffman does a swell turn as the antihero's Italian mentor. But despite a fairly spectacular climax, the material's generic limitations eventually catch up with the plot. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
There are sniff movies and there are snuff movies, but Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is both. It has the bouquet of balm and blood. Imagine "Fragrance of the Lambs." Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jennie Punter
While Tom Tykwer's lavish and lively screen adaptation of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is certainly not a stinker, there is something decidedly off about it. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
What's missing is less a sense of the protagonist's inner nose (which is very well-trammeled) as a sense of his inner life, motivation or desire. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Tykwer's camera can assault the audience with the rankest of imagery, but not even once does it come close to distilling the actual aroma of the abattoir that was 18th-century France. And for that, I suppose, we should all be thankful. Read full review
30
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Try as it might to be refined and provocative, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer never rises above the pedestrian creepiness of its conceit. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
This isn't pleasant to watch. Neither is it amusing, intellectually engaging, whimsically fascinating, coldly satirical or painfully poignant, though at any given moment in this erratic film director Tom Tykwer might be trying for one of these conflicting tones. Read full review
25
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Perfume offers eau de crud. Read full review
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