The Hand of God
Netflix | Release Date: December 3, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 2, 2021
It’s the work of a director in full command of his gifts, from the kaleidoscopic vignettes of family life that make the first half such a constant delight through the supple modulation of tone midway, when shocking tragedy prompts a shift into a more ruminative mood. Read full review
100
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezSep 2, 2021
It’s a lovely, charming, vibrant, sad, bildungsroman tale and roman-fleuve that pays small tribute to Maradona. But more importantly, it manages to both memorialize this agonizing turning point in his life and warmly reminisce on the bliss that came before it. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 15, 2021
I wouldn’t say that this movie is a distraction from reality, any more than I would call it a work of realism. It’s a beautiful tautology: a true-to-life movie about a life made for movies. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriDec 13, 2021
With previous films like the Oscar-winning Great Beauty and the politically charged biopics Il Divo and Loro, Sorrentino indulged his fondness for boisterous, bunga-bunga stylization. He is contemporary cinema’s mad poet of unchecked hedonism. But he holds himself back this time around. The Hand of God isn’t realistic or gritty (or, God forbid, subtle), but it is more subdued. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 3, 2021
The Hand of God creates a reality that is by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and remarkable for its buoyancy and grace. It’s a film from the hand of a master. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 26, 2021
The Hand of God is most affecting when reality does intrude—not only when fate takes a terrible hand, piercing the family’s heart, but also in stretches of languor. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfDec 9, 2021
It’s a personal, aching, and romantic film that’s swimming in the complicated trials of youth. Read full review
89
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpDec 3, 2021
Guided by Fabietto, the movie takes its time. It watches. It breathes. It captures life with a clarity even Sorrentino’s best efforts haven’t quite—which makes it his best effort to date. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsDec 3, 2021
With his rich coming-of-age drama The Hand of God, Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino not only courts, but squashes comparisons to formative maestro Federico Fellini. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattDec 7, 2021
There are more cohesive coming-of-age movies to be sure, and subtler ones. But God doesn't really try too hard to make it all make sense; it's just one boy's dolce vita, drenched in Mediterranean sun, hormones, and salt air. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 2, 2021
The Hand of God doesn’t always find the clearest way of knotting these various stories together, and the film’s second half — replete with so many highs — also feels like it leaves a number of important characters dangling in the wind. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekDec 20, 2021
The Hand of God is a lovely film, occasionally oddball in the best way, and astute in the way it handles tragedy and loss. Read full review
80
The IndependentAdam WhiteDec 3, 2021
The film is bawdy and wistful, with a rich vein of melancholy running through it. Read full review
80
EmpireAlex GodfreyDec 3, 2021
This charmingly odd tribute to Sorrentino’s formative years is slighter than it possibly deserves to be, but when it’s this handsome, who cares? Will have you absolutely salivating for Italy. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeDec 3, 2021
Paolo Sorrentino’s soothing, funny, occasionally infuriating The Hand of God sits somewhere between the irresistible sentimentality of the Branagh drama and the more complex harmonies of Cuarón’s bildungsfilm. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 1, 2021
It would be really obtuse not to marvel at the exuberance, energy and vivid moment-by-moment immediacy of this movie: Sorrentino is a film-maker who is always on the move, on the attack. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenSep 2, 2021
Things in The Hand of God are often funny and sad – all at the same time. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 2, 2021
Sorrentino and his cast make these teenage recollections twinge with freshness. Like our own sharpest memories of adolescence, the haze of nostalgia doesn’t dull their edge. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneySep 2, 2021
The boisterousness remains, as does the unreconstructed maleness that has often been a jarring mannerism in his work. But new intimacy also yields a lightness and tenderness that are a welcome addition to Sorrentino’s palette. Read full review
75
UproxxVince ManciniDec 18, 2021
Hand of God is a charming, frequently funny coming-of-age tale shot so exquisitely that it would make any Italian-American angry at his ancestors. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyDec 16, 2021
These characters are so vibrant and the episodes so richly imagined that it’s easy to overlook how shapeless The Hand of God is. The film has the vividness of memory, but also the structure of memory, which is to say no real structure at all. Visually, though, the movie is of a piece; it’s Sorrentino’s eye that holds it together. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 14, 2021
The meandering nature of the screenplay causes the movie to seem overlong as it noticeably loses momentum following a key coming-of-age moment. The episodes that follow don’t seem as fully realized as the ones that come before and, by the time The Hand of God ends, it’s floundering. On the whole, however, this is a charming and at times moving reminder of what it meant to be young in the 1980s. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJake CoyleDec 1, 2021
Paolo Sorrentino’s films can be overwrought, grotesque and uneven but they are rarely not alive. His latest, The Hand of God, is a catalog of wonders — of miracles both banal and eternal. Read full review
70
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Chandler LevackDec 7, 2021
There is something magical in Sorrentino’s tender, flawed familial portrait that risks social taboos. I’d rather watch something beautiful and dumb vying for real emotional truth than the woke-est and most sanitized cinema, which only wants my approval. The Hand of God is a sprawling, gorgeous mess, but one you can’t look away from – and it might just break your heart. Read full review
70
Little White LiesSophie Monks KaufmanDec 3, 2021
The dynamic of the central four is a pleasure incarnate. Equal parts funny and warm, each actor brings a specific dynamism that, when combined with the rest, crackles with life and love. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleDec 1, 2021
The first hour’s parade of oddballs and exaggerated vignettes under the bright Neapolitan pop of Daria D’Antonio’s cinematography can be broad to a fault, but there’s an honest perspective at work about what lands in an awkward boy’s memory. Read full review
67
Original-CinThom ErnstDec 2, 2021
The Hand of God lacks the imagination and mysticism that elevated The Great Beauty from being just a navel-gazing narrative about film. And the movie's presumptions about sexuality and coming-of-age are far too male-centric to be comfortably amusing. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubLeila LatifDec 1, 2021
It has as many superfluous sequences as great ones, with moments that serve no grander purpose than landing a single joke. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineWilliam RepassNov 30, 2021
Throughout Paolo Sorrentino’s film, the line between miracle and cosmic prank, even tragedy, is rendered indistinguishable. Read full review
60
The GuardianXan BrooksSep 2, 2021
The Hand of God, no surprise, is Sorrentino’s most nakedly personal film to date, almost to a fault in the way it jettisons the cool distance of The Great Beauty or Il Divo in favour of a sweaty, close-up evocation of youth. It’s a picture only Sorrentino could make. But that doesn’t necessarily make him the safest pair of hands. Read full review
58
The Film StageJared MobarakSep 11, 2021
We might still miss Sorrentino’s prior, more unforgiving tone, and his sleek filmmaking style; it’s arguable this material doesn’t mine the best of his strengths. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 9, 2021
As random as it all is, The Hand of God does add up to a “movie” in the broadest sense, just not a very coherent or interesting one. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 1, 2021
For all its beauty and poignancy, The Hand of God suffers from a strange paradox: It goes on too long but somehow doesn’t go far enough. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 1, 2021
In essence, Sorrentino thought his way up to the middle of The Hand of God and assumed the rest would take care of itself. He started filming too soon. His screenplay needed work. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 2, 2021
The Hand of God has some good scenes, but it’s the kind of portrait-of-an-artist drama where you watch the insults, the clashes, the assaultive attitude of it all and you think: Is this what it was actually like for the young Sorrentino growing up in Naples? Or does he simply have an aversion to scenes that don’t hit you over the head Read full review
40
TheWrapDan CallahanSep 2, 2021
It might be hoped that the passage of time could give him some fond or melancholy distance from such material, but Sorrentino serves up his memories in an unappealingly inert and flat manner. Read full review
More From This Movie

76 Critic Reviews

7.3 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 77 Project Hail Mary
2 75 Send Help
3 73 Hoppers
4 72 The Sheep Detectives
5 68 Crime 101
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL