Rules Don't Apply
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: November 23, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
18
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The New York TimesStephen HoldenNov 22, 2016
The wonder of the movie, which Mr. Beatty wrote and directed from a story he wrote with Bo Goldman, is that it is so good-humored. Fools and idiots abound, but demonic, systemic evil does not. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 29, 2017
Beatty’s casting of Collins and Ehrenreich is inspired: it’s easy to imagine both of these beautiful young things thriving in the Hollywood of the 1950s and 60s, in much the same way Beatty himself did. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 23, 2016
Somewhat unshapely, though not shapeless; often repetitive; gleefully reckless with facts; probably too long (I say “probably” because I enjoyed every one of its 126 minutes); at times demandingly dense, with the kind of sizzling crosstalk that hasn’t been heard since Robert Altman, and as madly fragmented as its hero’s mind must have been. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsAllen SalkinNov 21, 2016
Like Cohen's output, Rules Don't Apply as a whole is strangely hypnotizing. It has not been edited as so many other recent movies have, down to the nub, removing everything but the highlights you can produce movie trailers from. This thing breathes and creaks. It works. Maybe the cracks are what let the light in. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzNov 23, 2016
It's a mess, but a glorious one, and it's so clearly the expression of one artist's vision, seemingly immune to studio notes, that when you find yourself wondering "Who on earth could this possibly be for?" you realize that it's a compliment. As an entertainment, Rules Don't Apply deserves an extra half-star for audacity. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 23, 2016
This is a movie about how one’s passion can burn away and leave in its place a vast nostalgia. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 22, 2016
Rules Don’t Apply feels unbalanced in terms of story, and it has a big sag in the middle. But the good things in it are so good that they make it a fairly worthwhile experience. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithNov 22, 2016
This is Beatty’s first film in 15 years, a project he’s been working on for 40 years, and it’s immensely pleasing to see him in such fine form. Or, as his obsessive-compulsive subject would say, such fine form. Such fine form. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattNov 21, 2016
It turns out that Rules Don’t Apply is hardly about Hughes at all. Instead, it’s a small-scale, lovingly filmed study of the blossoming romance between two fictional show-business newbies. Read full review
75
ConsequenceBlake GobleNov 12, 2016
Hughes has seen his fair share of dramatizations on film (The Aviator, Melvin & Howard, The Hoax, even The Rocketeer), but Beatty delivers a fresh, idiosyncratic take, about the figure and the people in his orbit of oddity. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnNov 11, 2016
Beatty’s long-gestating project is a modestly enjoyable, well-acted nostalgia piece with just a touch of edge. Read full review
75
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthNov 11, 2016
If its somewhat unfocused narrative comes at the cost of a picture that could be more cohesive and concise, it still gifts viewers with characters and an era that’s entertaining to explore. Read full review
70
TimeStephanie ZacharekNov 23, 2016
This is a picture Beatty has wanted to make for years, and if the movie isn’t the achievement it should be, it’s at least entertaining in fits and starts. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyNov 11, 2016
This is a fitfully funny quasi-farce that takes off promisingly, loses its way mid-flight and comes in for a bumpy but safe landing. Read full review
70
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeNov 11, 2016
While writer-director Warren Beatty’s movie about Hughes is crafted of the finest materials, it too remains mostly earthbound, defying gravity only in fits and starts. Read full review
67
The Film StageJared MobarakNov 11, 2016
If anything it simply reminds us of his onscreen charisma and endearing humor, his handle of Hughes’ descent into eccentricity and insanity proving memorably entertaining. While he’s not the lead, he is the glue. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 23, 2016
It's clear that Beatty, who has studied Hughes for decades, has an instinctive understanding of the man, from getting stuck on phrases he repeats endlessly to making deals he can't wait to run away from. No kids. No roots. Sex, movies and aviation are the only constants. Why? Beatty hints, but never tells us. But his performance, filled with comic bite and aching confusion, teases a much deeper portrait. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 22, 2016
Rules Don’t Apply is a strange, schizophrenic sort of movie. Despite moments of emotional strength and bursts of quirky comedy, the film is undone by its generally lethargic tone and the film’s insistence to shift its focus from the putative lead characters to a supporting player. Read full review
63
USA TodayBrian TruittNov 22, 2016
Tthe writer/producer/director/star’s first film in 15 years struggles with its tone and is a solid if unspectacular effort, though Beatty smartly takes a supporting role to the youngsters by playing the kookily eccentric Hughes. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrNov 22, 2016
This is not a well-made film but it is an enjoyable one, in part because it’s genuinely unpredictable and in part because it’s a pleasure to see one of the great stars of his era on a movie screen once more. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleApr 29, 2017
There's a wry comic sensibility that sees Hughes himself as an absurdity who seems half aware of his own ridiculousness. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfNov 23, 2016
Rules Don’t Apply flies along at an inhuman speed; the edits are sharp, skipping years at a time, and the production values are unshowy. Like everything this star-director has done, the film is deceptively smart. It’s just a little too late to the game. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzNov 22, 2016
It’s kind of funny, it’s kind of revealing, it’s kind of insightful as a glimpse into Hughes’ increasingly twisted mind, but it never adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranNov 22, 2016
Rules Don't Apply, as its name implies, is a movie intent on going its own way. It's not without its charms, but there aren't enough of them and they don't readily cohere. Read full review
60
The GuardianJordan HoffmanNov 11, 2016
It doesn’t make sense as a comedy, it doesn’t quite work as a drama, and it doesn’t follow the typical roadmap of a biopic, but Rules Don’t Apply is strangely compelling nonetheless. Read full review
60
Screen DailyTim GriersonNov 11, 2016
The romantic comedy-drama Rules Don’t Apply is, by turns, fizzy and melancholy, nostalgic and clear-eyed, but it never builds to anything especially substantial. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeNov 11, 2016
Beatty tries hard to re-create the look and feel of late-’50s Hollywood as it existed both on-screen and off, aided by DP Caleb Deschanel and terrific costume and set contributions. And yet, it actually comes off too conservative for its own time, with stiff performances from Collins and Ehrenreich. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 26, 2016
Beatty is trying to elevate the material while at the same time draining it of energy. The movie is so misbegotten that it’s almost poignant. But I hope Beatty has a few more left in him. Read full review
50
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneyNov 25, 2016
Rules Don’t Apply could have been an insightful look at a tragic, troubled figure. Instead Beatty made a conventional romance with lead characters we hardly care about. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Johanna SchnellerNov 23, 2016
If you call your movie this, you’re kinda asking for it. Some rules should apply. For example, characters should make a little sense, so when they behave in “unpredictable” ways, we can tell. But Warren Beatty, back in the director’s chair after 18 years, has gone rogue. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephanie MerryNov 22, 2016
If Beatty was not trying to make a movie about Hughes, he utterly failed, because the love story of Frank and Marla is more like a framing device — a gateway drug to get the audience into the theater so that Beatty can chew some scenery. Even so, he chews it quite well. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyNov 22, 2016
Aside from Beatty’s performance, the only consistent thing the movie has going for it is ineffable strangeness; it seems to be trapped at the bottom of the chasm that separates its subversive aims from its nostalgic pursuits. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenNov 21, 2016
Beatty directed and wrote the script, but from a man who made the weighty epic “Reds” and the corrosively funny “Bulworth,” Rules Don’t Apply feels curiously weightless and as forgettable as its title. Read full review
50
The New YorkerRichard BrodyNov 21, 2016
Beatty packs the movie with labored period references and unsubtle allusions to Donald Trump. He delights in Hughes’s high-handed wisdom, his high-stakes gamesmanship, and his petty idiosyncrasies, while looking ruefully at his paranoid reclusiveness. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallNov 21, 2016
Rules Don't Apply is affably mediocre, even tolerable between brief pleasures. The movie's lone constant amusement is Beatty's madcap portrayal of Hughes, keeping aloft his Spruce Goose of nonromantic not quite comedy. Read full review
50
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoNov 11, 2016
Warren Beatty's Howard Hughes retrospective, Rules Don't Apply, is equally tone-deaf in humor and drama, cobbled together in ways that never seem to fit. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 11, 2016
Beatty, who plays Hughes in the picture, tries to give us a movie as wildly eccentric and asymmetrical as the man himself. He’s concocted a random romantic farce that isn’t romantic or particularly farcical. But random? Yeah. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesNov 23, 2016
Either way, Beatty has taken an object of enduring fascination and made him … not so much. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineElise NakhnikianNov 16, 2016
Warren Beatty's portrayal of Howard Hughes has the overly polished feel of an anecdote that's been told too often. Read full review
25
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshNov 22, 2016
It would still be a stinker even if it wasn't cloaked in a dark shroud of cultural and political relevancy. It's just that bad. Read full review
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