The Dancer Upstairs
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: May 2, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
12
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
TimeRichard Schickel
Patient and plodding -- but as realized by John Malkovich, in his directorial debut, utterly absorbing. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
A story of obsession and honor, deception and self-deception set against a sharply etched landscape of political upheaval and intrigue. Malkovich orchestrates all this with assuredness, and Bardem, looking weary and worn, inhabits his character with a realness, a truth, that's downright spooky. And beautiful. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The movie has a mystery, and moral unease, that lingers. Read full review
80
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
The movie does an admirable job of juggling political, dramatic and comic elements. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Echoes its director's own deportment as a performer, alternating silky smoothness with burlap coarseness. Though Mr. Malkovich stays entirely behind the scenes, he creates a languorous but gripping story of people fighting to stay a step ahead of hopelessness. Read full review
80
VarietyDavid Rooney
The film is powered by a superbly controlled performance from Javier Bardem. While it lacks economy and could have used a firmer hand in shaping the key central relationship, this intelligent, arrestingly sober drama packs a cumulative punch. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
If the screenwriter and director had followed their cinematic instincts fully, they would have collaborated on one of the more satisfying political thrillers in years; instead, they've managed to create three-quarters of one. Read full review
80
SlateDavid Edelstein
The film has a foggy cast to it--flat and insinuatingly creepy, like the actor. But then it can be lit, in an instant, by searing flash-pots of cruelty and wit. Even when it's slightly opaque, it's transfixing. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
The Dancer Upstairs, is a haunting and often beautiful work, part doomed romance and part political thriller, that demonstrates the adult command of the medium Malkovich has always demonstrated as an actor. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Bardem delivers the kind of performance the director might have given himself: subdued, thoughtful, wry, sometimes a bit too detached. Read full review
75
PremiereGlenn Kenny
Malkovich is more interested in hitting notes of elegiac lyricism than delivering socko action; this is a thriller that means to get under your skin rather than make you leap from your seat. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Malkovich weaves something delicate and devastating. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
This is a thriller that embraces stillness and silence where others prefer noise and bombast. It thrives on the hush before the explosion instead of its aftermath, and it's that eerie sense of expectation that gives the film its thick aura of suspense. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Elegantly, even languorously, photographed by Jose Luis Alcaine, who doesn't punch into things but regards them, so that we are invited to think about them. That doesn't mean the movie is slow; it moves with a compelling intensity toward its conclusion. Read full review
75
USA TodayMike Clark
It has an elusive, haunting quality, but it's too long at 133 minutes, and there aren't many movies these days that get more involving as they progress. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
A labor of love hobbled by a stubborn desire to eke its delicate love story out of a premise that all but sits up and begs to be treated as a political thriller. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Studded with terrorist attacks... Yet Malkovich never exploits these for action-movie thrills: in each instance the loss of life is terrible and the morality of the act is left treacherously ambiguous. Read full review
70
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It's not a great film, but in its reckless audacity -- an American director working from a British novel set in Latin America, dealing with the largest themes of Latin American art, politics and history -- it's reassuring. Someone's still willing to take a big chance. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Initially engrossing, The Dancer Upstairs slackens in its second half. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid Denby
A dramatic failure, but, at its best, it offers a frightening suggestion of the way terror can alter reality so thoroughly that, step by step, the fantastic becomes accepted as the mere commonplace. [5 May 2003, p. 104]
70
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
The Dancer Upstairs would have made a suitable double feature with "The Quiet American"; both films unfold slowly, build toward an anxious climax and end with a shrug of grief. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Ambitious and uneven.
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
At its best in the interludes between explosions. Read full review
63
New York PostMegan Lehmann
It's mostly a political thriller, contingent on a love story. It's kind of noirish, subtly humorous and intermittently confusing. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Ambitious material for a first-time directorial outing, but, even with a huge assist from his lead actor, Malkovich doesn't nail it. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Far from perfect but completely unique, the film could best be described as a paranoid South American metaphysical political thriller -- you heard me -- and whatever its failures, they're not ones of nerve or imagination. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
A promising film rather than a fully realized one. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
The movie is often both smart and creepy, but it's still a novice effort. After an initially engrossing start, it stumbles through a series of implausible coincidences and murky events, barely held together by the magnetic performance of Javier Bardem. Read full review
60
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Though he never quite rescues the film, Bardem continually suggests the tensions bubbling under the surface that Dancer itself never penetrates. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
It's in English, but the actors speak it with tortuous accents that are a constant struggle to understand and make them seem like foreigners in their own land. Spanish with English subtitles would have served this story much, much better. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The movie fails at the primary steps of turning Rejas' mind inside out and dramatizing the contradictions in his heart and soul. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Casting a film set in Latin America with Spanish-and Italian-speaking performers acting in English misfires; the actors' diverse accents clash, some are clearly more fluent than others and the sense of relief when anyone speaks a rare line in Spanish is palpable. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Has many of the qualities that made the actor such a great target for self-parody in Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich" - it's sober, deliberate, self-consciously mysterious and no fun at all. Read full review
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
The only reason this dilemma has any import is thanks to Bardem, who almost single-handedly drags the film along. Read full review
50
Film ThreatAnthony Miele
Humorous yet subtle characters aid Malkovich in creating a film that is engaging and entertaining, while at the same time lumbering during long stretches. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
While you can't fault The Dancer Upstairs for lack of ambition, its tantalizing ingredients add up to a less impressive package than I'd hoped for. Malkovich should select a more manageable subject the next time he sits in the director's chair. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
An ambitious political thriller, a multilingual film of mood and texture and the occasional haunting image. Read full review
42
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
A murky, turgid work that is no doubt exactly the film Malkovich wished to make but is so indirect and affected as to border on incoherent. Read full review
40
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Malkovich has done considerable directing in the theater, but nothing in the acting here shows acuteness of choice or subtlety of touch. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Falters in small but important ways -– the suspense, carefully ratcheted up throughout, just plain goes busto in the film’s final moments -– while Malkovich stays resolutely behind the camera, a consummate professional who, this time, misses his mark by the merest of degrees. Read full review
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