The End of the Tour
A24 | Release Date: July 31, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallAug 11, 2015
The End of the Tour asks viewers to lean in, listen well and be rewarded with an uncommonly intelligent and relatable movie experience. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 6, 2015
Improbably, The End of the Tour doesn’t just sustain the audience’s interest in Wallace and Lipsky’s exchanges, arguments and moments of bonding, but invites us to care deeply about the men. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 6, 2015
It’s a brilliant slice of life. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 31, 2015
At times the movie’s small canvas feels momentous. They’ve found the inner tensions in people’s presentations of themselves in a way that’s positively Wallace-like. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenJul 30, 2015
James Ponsoldt's magnificent The End of the Tour gives us two guys talking, and the effect is breathtaking. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJul 30, 2015
It’s ultimately a movie — one of the most rigorous and thoughtful I’ve seen — about the ethical and existential traps our fame-crazed culture sets for the talented and the mediocre alike. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJul 29, 2015
One of the best movies of the year. Read full review
100
New York PostKyle SmithJul 29, 2015
The End of the Tour is a five-day bender of a talk — a film that illuminates like few others the singular pleasure of shared discovery of one another’s sensibility. In an unassuming way, it’s a glory. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianJeff BakerAug 13, 2015
The End of the Tour can feel like a down-home deification at times: Like Einstein riding a bike, only it's Wallace going to the Mall of America. It's not sentimental, though, at least not until the very end, and is moving in beautiful, unexpected ways. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJul 30, 2015
Like "Almost Famous," Ponsoldt’s film gets at something deep and true about the journalist/subject dynamic and the phony intimacy and tiny betrayals implicit in it. It’s a profoundly moving story about a towering talent who seemed to feel too much and judge himself too harshly to stick around for long. What a shame. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Jul 29, 2015
The result is less portrait of an artist than snapshot of a brief, meaningful encounter, shared between two men enjoying different stages of professional success. That one of these men happens to be a modern literary hero is almost, if not quite, incidental. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 6, 2015
There was a cry from Wallace fans when Segel was cast (some are still up in arms), but he’s terrific. So is Eisenberg, in an even more difficult role. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJan 25, 2015
Essentially, this is a film about existential emptiness, and yet it’s beautiful and alive, as filled with humor as it is with melancholy. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonAug 20, 2015
An offbeat and fascinating film. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaAug 13, 2015
We're in the company of a great character here, with a lot on his mind, a lot to say. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 6, 2015
Just because David Foster Wallace would almost certainly have hated The End of the Tour doesn’t mean that it’s not a worthwhile movie. And in fact James Ponsoldt’s dramatic adaptation of Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky’s memoir about his 1996 road trip with Wallace is pretty excellent: heartfelt, probing, funny, above all touching. Read full review
88
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 4, 2015
It takes nothing away from The End of the Tour in labeling this Jason Segel/Jesse Eisenberg dramedy a “bromance.” Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 29, 2015
Nothing and everything happen in the movie. Director James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), working from a fluid script by playwright Donald Margulies, does justice to the book without compromising his film. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerAug 7, 2015
Directed by James Ponsoldt from a script by Donald Margulies, the film gets at the wariness and competitiveness inside the journalist-interviewee dynamic and, in Segel’s performance, captures the quandary of an immensely gifted and immensely troubled writer who disdained the celebrity he also, without fully fessing up to it, sought. Read full review
83
HitfixDaniel FienbergJan 26, 2015
Thanks to Margulies and Ponsoldt and thanks to Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg, End of the Tour mostly does right by David Foster Wallace, a not insignificant feat when you're dealing with a figure who generates such passion. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJan 25, 2015
Intimate, soul-baring, and winning, The End Of The Tour is a special, lovely little gem. Read full review
80
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeJul 30, 2015
End of the Tour refrains from depicting the process of writing, but what it has to say about the act of creation, not to mention the act of talking about it to an interviewer, is rich and fascinating. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensJul 30, 2015
I say give The End of the Tour a try. Ponsoldt’s gentle, talky road movie is a sort of Gen-X update of "My Dinner With André": A movie of ideas that, far from being the pompous screed that category might imply, actually contains interesting ideas — and what’s more, allows its characters’ perspectives on those ideas to remain in productive tension with one another. Read full review
80
The GuardianJordan HoffmanJan 25, 2015
What The End of the Tour tries to sell, and sells well, is that Wallace’s big heart was just not made for these times. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJan 25, 2015
It teases out the distinctly modern subject of celebrity profile-writing, a rare one for the movies, detouring into avenues of attraction and envy. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAug 12, 2015
Movies about writers can be notorious slogs but, amazingly, The End of the Tour is not one of those films. In fact, it is so much better than any movie based primarily on conversations has any right to be. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 6, 2015
Wallace’s 2008 suicide informs the film and Jason Segel’s performance. What Wallace wants to say, tries to say but can’t quite say is that, having reached the summit of success, he sees an even bigger mountain in front of him. His anxiety about holding it together in the face of newfound celebrity is no affectation. He’s frightened of it and probably has good reason to be. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 6, 2015
The actor (Segel) creates a dreamy, solemn but subtly vibrant version of Wallace that works for him and for the material. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJul 31, 2015
What it definitely isn't is a biography of David Foster Wallace, much less a celebration of his work and worldview. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneAug 3, 2015
Anybody hoping that The End of the Tour would mirror the formal dazzle of Wallace’s fiction, doubling back on itself like the frantically probing encounters in his 1999 collection, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” will be disappointed. Yet the film, despite its flatness, is worth exploring. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoJul 26, 2015
It does well in using dialogue to shape its escalating tête-à-tête, but the filmmaking is too fuzzy to expand on those ideas. Read full review
60
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlJul 28, 2015
[The] conversation peters out as the film grinds on, the men getting competitive and the camera nosing into their faces. Everyone involved sifts the material a little too hard for clues to Wallace's eventual suicide. Read full review
50
VarietyDennis HarveyJan 25, 2015
The two leads’ clashing styles might work if the film were entirely about two superficially similar people’s inability to truly find common ground. But as we’re finally intended to judge their meeting a profound connective one on at least some levels, the chemistry simply feels off. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 21, 2015
Even with that pedigree, Ponsoldt's film doesn't snap and sizzle as much as it just lays there, leaving moviegoers who haven't been converted to the Wallace cult to long for the end of this particular "Tour." Read full review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)John SemleySep 3, 2015
The performances, the writing, the direction, Segel’s D.F.W. impression, everything is just fine. But The End of the Tour is disgraceful. It feels like it’s towing out the real Wallace’s ghost to perform some soppy parody of himself. Read full review
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