Straight Outta Compton
Universal Pictures | Release Date: August 14, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
Total FilmStephen KellyAug 26, 2015
Straight Outta Compton soars for an hour before spiralling into a bloated, melodramatic mess. Still, it’s worth it for the early ferocity, capturing just how powerful N.W.A really were. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 13, 2015
Straight Outta Compton doesn't shy entirely from the uglier side of the N.W.A. story, including the claims that their music and their lifestyles glorified thug life, perpetuated gun violence, advocated drug use and reveled in misogyny. Instead, Gray's film owns it. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranAug 13, 2015
Alternately riveting and wearying, up-to-the-minute relevant as well as self-mythologizingly self-indulgent — as much of a heroic origins story as anything out of the Marvel factory — Straight Outta Compton ends up juggling more story lines and moods than it can handle. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 13, 2015
The partying is as bland as any all-purpose music video and feels more like another script signpost (and audience-pandering) than a serious attempt to get out what it means to be young, black, gifted, fabulously wealthy and much desired. Mr. Gray does far better when the story edges into heavier, more dappled realms. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 13, 2015
There’s way too much inside-baseball money talk here, when a simpler plot—one about a band whose apocalyptic vision comes to pass—would have been plenty. Read full review
60
The GuardianJordan HoffmanJul 31, 2015
The first half of Straight Outta Compton, F Gary Gray’s two-and-a-half hour opus about the birth of west coast gangsta rap, is bursting with energy, exuberance and inspiration. The second half is immobilised by bloat and sanctification. Read full review
60
Screen DailyTim GriersonJul 31, 2015
Despite a twisty, juicy and compelling story, there remains a staid conventionality that keeps the political and thematic undercurrents from being explored as satisfyingly as one might hope. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternAug 13, 2015
With a running time of 147 minutes, the film not only runs low on energy toward the end — internecine battles can’t compete with the early excitement of gifted young kids making it big on a national stage — but turns ploddingly sentimental in its sudden focus on Eazy-E’s painful decline, and death, from AIDS. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyAug 12, 2015
Aside from these few flourishes of the outré and symbolically charged, there’s little to distinguish the movie from any number of overlong hit-by-hit music biopics of the nodding-approvingly-from-behind-a-mixing-console variety. Read full review
50
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonAug 11, 2015
It's clear that Straight Outta Compton is at once too padded and too thin. It's as if the story of these real-life legends was so unruly and dangerous that the filmmakers became the cops, forcing it into submission. Read full review
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