The Phoenician Scheme
Focus Features | Release Date: May 30, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
37
Mixed:
15
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 19, 2025
The Phoenician Scheme has none of the lavish, kooky excess of, say, The Grand Budapest Hotel. And the plot, with its fixation on intricate, not-quite-cricket business deals, is—let’s just come out and say it—boring. But Anderson seems to be expressing an indistinct dissatisfaction with the current world order in the best way he can: in a parade of color that’s somehow less colorful than usual. Read full review
60
Screen RantGraeme GuttmannMay 18, 2025
For all The Phoenician Scheme's eccentric thrills, sardonic performances, and globe-trotting adventure, the film still feels limited in the grand scheme of things. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesTara BradyMay 18, 2025
The machinations find a charming focus in the thawing between Del Toro and Threapleton. Both actors bring a jouissance to the slightly jaded milieu. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 18, 2025
It is always entertaining, and delivered with the usual conviction and force but with less of the romantic extravagance than we’ve seen before, less of the childlike loneliness that has been detectable in his greatest movies. Read full review
60
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 18, 2025
Anderson rescues his film from oblivion in the end, closing out his story with a disarmingly sweet—and, in some ways, provocative—moral argument. Read full review
60
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 18, 2025
Although The Phoenician Scheme is transporting — an effect amplified by Alexandre Desplat’s lilting orchestral score, supplemented by selections from Stravinsky and Beethoven — the narrative proves to be fussy rather than delightful. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreMay 18, 2025
It’s a movie that makes you long to be able to freeze frames in order to appreciate the loveliness and wit of its details, while at the same time giving you little reason to want to revisit the thing as a whole. Read full review
60
BBCNicholas BarberMay 18, 2025
It's good fun, but unless your tolerance for the director's idiosyncrasies is stratospherically high, the chances are that the story will seem too random for you to care about by the halfway point. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMay 20, 2025
The structure is episodic, somewhat elliptical, and occasionally clumsy. Even the widely imitated and parodied Anderson style, with its symmetries and whip pans, wavers toward the end, leading to an incoherent climax. (The fact that this is the first live-action feature Anderson has made without his longtime cinematographer, Robert Yeoman, is only a partial explanation.) Read full review
58
The Film StageLuke HicksMay 19, 2025
It’s often pleasant, pretty, impressive, and well-scored (and we’ll note the spectacle of design shortly), but that isn’t enough for someone of his caliber. Where is the emotion? The feeling? The Owen Wilson perspective of his storytelling soul? Read full review
55
The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeMay 30, 2025
The Phoenician Scheme sees Anderson indulging in all of his usual design fetishes (we don’t just get precisely-lettered labels on ornate boxes, we also get the yellowing cellophane tape affixed to those labels) without seeming to get around to a story or characters or themes. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldJun 6, 2025
It’s not terrible, but it’s an elegantly filmed stumble. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreJun 6, 2025
Like any fan, I’ll watch anything Anderson turns his attention to. But all the stars and star cameos, all the jaunty, classical music needle drops, all the del Toro drollery, the “lost boys” cadre of Korda kids and the Middle Eastern history hinted at in the “schemes” can’t paper over how flat and empty this “scheme” turns out to be. Read full review
40
SlateDana StevensMay 29, 2025
For all its exquisite boxes-within-boxes compositions and cleverly designed sets (the production design is by longtime collaborator Adam Stockhausen, who won an Oscar for his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel), this whole movie unfolded for me as if behind a thick pane of emotion-proof glass. Read full review
40
The TimesKevin MaherMay 18, 2025
On the positive side, Threapleton, the daughter of Kate Winslet, is sensational. Quietly commanding, but always glowing with charisma, she is the discovery here. Read full review
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