The Dreamers
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: February 6, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
15
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
50
Film ThreatKevin Carr
It wasn't as good as the films it cites, but at least it didn't bore me. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterJean Oppenheimer
The film's real failure is that neither the story nor the characters capture the zeitgeist that Bertolucci theoretically set out to celebrate. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Bertolucci is trying hard to shock us with this stuff, but, for all the perversities and the abundant nudity, the movie has an air of inconsequence about it. [9 February 2004, p. 74]
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
He doesn’t entirely succeed, but the attempt has poignancy: As uneven as much of his recent work has been, Bertolucci's still in love with the movies, and his ardor--if not always the ends he puts it to--is exhilarating. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The Dreamers may go slack when you most want it to soar, but it also seduces with eroticism and resonates with ideas. Read full review
40
TimeRichard Schickel
Dispassionate, curiously lifeless, lacking the energy of either youthful commitment or a deeply engaged re-examination of the past. Read full review
50
VarietyDavid Rooney
The whole spirit of rebellion, passion and protest that should be a driving force for the characters plays more like a cultivated affectation. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
The Dreamers is a universal story, one that captures the thrill of discovering culture, sex, and politics, and the painful twinge of learning that those worlds aren't enough. Read full review
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
The Dreamers is bad, but unlike the similarly camped-up "Little Buddha" or "Stealing Beauty," it's not exactly boring. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
In The Dreamers, Bertolucci wants to take us back to a more revolutionary time, but mostly he ends up recalling the faded revolution of his own glory days. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Does have its pleasures, but the feeling is inescapable that the person most pleased is Bertolucci himself. In essence he is the dreamer of the title, as eager to retreat into this hermetic world of his own creation as his characters are into theirs. Fair enough, but why does he have to drag us along with him? Read full review
60
EmpireKim Newman
It seesaws between disturbing psychosis and freewheeling nouvelle vague romance, then turns awkwardly editorial in the last reel. Read full review
80
The New York TimesDana Stevens
The Dreamers, which is disarmingly sweet and completely enchanting, fuses sexual discovery with political tumult by means of a heady, heedless romanticism that nearly obscures the film's patient, skeptical intelligence. Read full review
63
USA TodayMike Clark
The problem is the letdown you feel when these glorious morsels (film clips and soundtrack) end, and it's back to three morose schlumps. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Best when it recreates the cultural and political ferment of the era, capturing the idealism that made youths push against the social boundaries imposed on them by elders. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyF. X. Feeney
Among the pleasures the film evokes, as few films have, is the bliss of conversation. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineEthan Alter
Ultimately, the film works best when viewed as a tone poem that examines the present through the prism of the past. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
As tawdry as this may seem, Bertolucci is not trying to one-up himself. He was 27 when the student riots occurred and very much a participant in a revolution that was both complex in its implications and naive in much of the behavior. He has caught that perfectly Read full review
25
New York PostJonathan Foreman
A miracle of badness, a kind of art- house "Showgirls" -- which actually exceeds "Showgirls" in its self-indulgence, shallowness and sheer stupidity. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
More unfortunately still, the elements of the story fit poorly, like a Tucker decked out as a sexmobile.
60
SlateDavid Edelstein
It doesn't entirely gel, but few directors could explore the collision of the ego and the outside world with such sympathy or purpose. It's possible that the NC-17 has never been used to such PG-13 ends. Read full review
100
PremiereGlenn Kenny
The thrills of this movie are aesthetic ones, the creation of new, ravishing imagery (and all three of our young heroes are beautiful enough to be up to this task), the surrender to dream logic, the adoration of the silver screen. Read full review
70
NewsweekDavid Ansen
The tale is a bit too insular and claustrophobic for its own good: in the end these characters lack the depth and complexity to resonate deeply. The pleasures of The Dreamers stay mostly on the surface. But when the surface is as stylish and sexy as this, it's hard to complain. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Ablaze with poetry and danger, and suffused with an odd kind of intellectual kitsch. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
My guess is that The Dreamers will have a certain resonance for those of us who discovered movies and sex at the same time during the '60s. For the rest of you, the film is a curiosity about cinegenic youths baring their bodies while thinking they are baring their souls. Read full review
70
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
By equal measure tragic and hopeful, it is both a love song to escapism and a warm embrace of the real world. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
It may give many viewers a licentious flutter, but the highbrow ingredient -- although it desperately wants to be there -- is missing. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Watchable if far-fetched movie is seriously marred by its three leads; only Garrel manages to suggest a person rather than a fashion model dutifully following instructions. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film is extraordinarily beautiful. Bertolucci is one of the great painters of the screen. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Lives down to its title -- what an odd and gauzy reverie this is, a strangely muted picture that unfolds at a distinct remove from the reality around it. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
An ambitious and exciting piece of work, a movie about sex and movies made by a filmmaker who understands the power of each to set off fantasy, create addiction, incite danger and transform the spirit. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy Burr
The Dreamers isn't that bad -- actually, it's funny, affecting, interestingly twisted, and seriously erotic before it heads south in the final stretch. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Unfortunately, there's no great performance here. Pitt (who looks like Leonardo Di Caprio) delivers nothing close to Brando's tour de force, and all three stars may have been chosen less for their acting ability than their willingness to disrobe for the camera. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
The Dreamers is infused with the same kind of wistful melancholy that made the French New Wave films so winning, and it’s all gorgeous to look at. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The Dreamers argues that life must be lived, not dreamt. But it also remembers the confounding pleasures of dreaming with your eyes wide open. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
For all the flash and sparkle, there's little heat. The Dreamers wants to be "First Tango in Paris." It's more like "Last Tango Under Glass." Read full review
60
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
The overall effect of the film is melancholy: it seems desperate for the past. Read full review
100
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
The Dreamers is a real humdinger, at once an intimate romance, a glimpse into a rather unconventional friendship and a beautifully focused celebration of cinema itself. Read full review
70
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
Gorgeously shot, cleverly directed, smartly scripted and convincingly performed, The Dreamers is itself something of a movie puzzle. Read full review
63
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
As the threesome's movie games push them into an incestuous menage a trois, the movie loses its grip. Read full review
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