The Hoax
Miramax Films | Release Date: April 6, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
5
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Gere is terrific at suggesting the kind of addictive cocktail of excitement, panic, chutzpah, creativity, and naked hunger for fame and megabucks that might inspire such big, fat lies. Read full review
91
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Thanks to Hallstrom's slaphappy artistry and a sparkling ensemble, Hoax is a hoot. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Comedy and suspense, satire and shame are all mashed together--with breezy confidence. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Gere gives 'em the old razzle-dazzle with his roguish charm and sharp comic timing. The surprise is the unexpected feeling he brings to this challenging role. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The Hoax lures you in with its captivating performances. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
The Hoax makes the fakery of disgraced writers Jayson Blair, James Frey and Stephen Glass seem puny by comparison. Irving was the grand master, and Gere's portrait and Hallström's movie suggest why: He almost bought his own story, believed his own outrageous pack of lies. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Assuming the bulk of what we see is factual, it comes off as a gripping docudrama. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
It's an accomplished potboiler entertainment, as calculated and clever as the stories Irving spins to stay afloat in the growing sea of his own lies. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterRichard James Havis
Entertaining and piquant. The film does possess some of the bittersweet qualities that usually mark Hallstrom's films, but it's generally a tougher, more incisive work that ranks as one of his best. Read full review
80
VarietyDeborah Young
Lasse Hallstrom's breezy, fast-paced, somewhat loose-ended account of how he (Irving) did it offers a surprisingly layered vehicle for a maniacally conniving Richard Gere, backed up by a superb Alfred Molina as his accomplice. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
It is for the most part a jumpy, suspenseful caper, full of narrow escapes, improbable reversals and complicated intrigue. But it has a sinister, shadowy undertow, an intimation of dread that lingers after Irving's game is up. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The result is an unexpectedly satisfying fantasia of reality and imagination, a meditation on the nature of lies and deception, on how we come to embrace not the truth but what it suits us to believe. Read full review
80
EmpireStaff (Not credited)
Gere proves that there’s more to his range than ageing romantic leads in a multi-layered tale of public fraud and self-deception. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJosh Rosenblatt
The Hoax isn't Gere’s best movie (that honor will always and forever belong to "Days of Heaven"), but it might feature his best performance. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Isn't all it could have been. But the filmmakers catch the right glittery look and paranoid intensity, and they make gutsy speculations about the story beneath the story. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Hallström conveys a bit of the circuslike atmosphere of the times. But he overreaches in trying to turn the film into a commentary on the politically corrupt 1970s. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Seeks to set the record straight. But Gere's sneaky, ingratiating presence keeps it dishonest to the last frame. Read full review
75
PremiereGlenn Kenny
Wheeler's script is a buzzing contrivance, and Hallström's direction is brisker than almost anything he's ever done. So by all means enjoy The Hoax -- it's smart fun. Just don't buy it. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Hugely entertaining because director Lasse Hallstrom and screenwriter William Wheeler have greatly embellished the "truth" in Irving's book about the hoax. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
A personal story with broad implications for the culture as a whole. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The only thing missing from The Hoax might be a couple of songs. It's that breezy and fleet a movie. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Wheeler and director Lasse Hallstrom don't want us to take anything too seriously. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRobert W. Butler
The film is not only a good deal of malicious fun, but it gives Gere his best role ever. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The movie is too long (nearly two hours), but the acting--Gere, Molina, the peerlessly edgy Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden as Irving's loopy Swiss-German painter wife--keeps you giggling. And the story has something up its sleeve--a dream finish. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Their kinship (Gere/Molina)--wholly unsexual yet lit, like that of Martin and Lewis, with an exasperated love--is the beacon of the movie, and it just about survives the lengthening shadows of the later scenes. Read full review
70
SalonStephanie Zacharek
An entertaining botch of a movie. Read full review
70
TimeRichard Schickel
Gere and Molina are themselves terrific as the con men. Read full review
70
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Entertaining though The Hoax is, the film that I imagined before I saw it was better. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's all polished and slick and credible, but it never truly engages. Perhaps it's because Irving's story is well-known; perhaps it's because of the script's repetitions and tangents; or perhaps it's simply because Hallstrom himself is ambivalent about his protagonist. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
As a movie, The Hoax isn't a fraud but it's not the real deal, either. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
It's hard to get a fix on what Hallstrom had in mind. The first half of the movie plays like a frenetic caper comedy...The second half turns psychologically dark. Read full review
60
Village VoiceElla Taylor
To its credit, The Hoax isn't glib--it doesn't chalk up Irving's moral vacuum to anything a bad mommy or daddy did. But there's no other point of view either; the film suffers a fatal equivocation over whether to frame him as a prankster or an American tragedy. Read full review
60
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
Full speed ahead fun, a rollicking caper romp that hearkens back to a quainter, pre-Ken Lay age when bigtime fraud could actually entail writing books as opposed to merely cooking them. Read full review
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Even though we're caught up in his derring-do as he beguiles entire meeting rooms of jaded publishers and editors, we're kept at a dissatisfying distance from Irving and the movie. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The narrative engine leaves the rails when Irving, like Hughes, plunges into paranoia (though Irving actually is the object of a high-level plot) and the style turns to the sort of intensely manipulated surrealism that Charlie Kaufman practiced, not successfully, in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind."
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
The Hoax is a fraud, and not a very good one at that. Stay with me here because we're about to spiral down the rabbit hole: The movie is a fictionalized account of writer Clifford Irving's fictionalized account of his own fictionalized account of wacky billionaire Howard Hughes. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
It's pretty perverse for William Wheeler, who scripted this feature, to get most of the facts wrong, inflating details that don't need any spin. (As Irving himself remarked, "You could call it a hoax about a hoax.") Read full review
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