The Tourist
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: December 10, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
37
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
22
Negative:
11
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 9, 2010
If Elise and Frank are opaque to each other, they're opaque for a reason, as, sadly, lovers sometimes are. (Come to think of it, this picture has more in common with "The Lives of Others" than you might expect.) Read full review
67
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 8, 2010
The Tourist is less likely to be remembered for its cat-and-mouse machinations than for the beautiful people carrying them out. Read full review
65
NPRElla TaylorDec 10, 2010
An awkward jumble of half-assed thriller and lumbering romantic comedy, less competent by a wide margin than "The Lives of Others." It's also a whole lot sillier, though not in a good way. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 11, 2010
As preposterous wannabe Hitchcockian thrillers go, this one is adequate. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazinePam GradyDec 9, 2010
A throwback to classic movies like Charade and North by Northwest where beautiful, sophisticated people answer life-threatening danger with bon mots and ingenuity. Read full review
50
TimeMary PolsDec 13, 2010
The pitch is enough to make you swoon, but the movie itself is curiously limp. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 10, 2010
This is a pale simulacrum of those high-style travel-porn thrillers of the '60s and '70s, which only serves to remind us that those aren't as easy to pull off as they look, and also that maybe they weren't so great in the first place. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 10, 2010
A would-be light thriller that's so deficient in the genre's essentials - such as witty dialogue, intriguing characters and surprising yet credible plot turns - that you're embarrassed for everyone involved. Read full review
50
New York PostLou LumenickDec 10, 2010
In the dud thriller The Tourist, Jolie basically plays an overdressed, humorless live-action version of Jessica Rabbit, running around Venice dodging hired killers. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyDec 9, 2010
What should have sizzled fizzles. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 9, 2010
There is a moment in The Tourist when Johnny Depp turns to Angelina Jolie and asks "Why is all this happening?" It's a question moviegoers will be asking themselves as well. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 9, 2010
Jolie never ignites, and neither does the movie. Mr. Depp doesn't fare better with a role that forces him to play meek and disappointingly mild, despite a few screenwriter-supplied tics. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 9, 2010
An alarmingly charmless attempt to evoke the elegant romance and jaunty, jet-setting intrigue of the aforementioned titles, The Tourist is notable for the total absence of movie-star heat that movie stars are paid unseemly sums to radiate. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisDec 9, 2010
A slow and silly action-comedy romantic-thriller. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 9, 2010
Star power can cover up a multitude of shortcomings in a film. Turns out stupidity isn't one of them. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 9, 2010
A facsimile of a masquerade of a gloss on "Charade," and on all the lesser cinematic charades that followed in the wake of director Stanley Donen's 1963 picture. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 8, 2010
There's a way to make a movie like The Tourist, but Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck doesn't find that way. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanDec 8, 2010
The Tourist isn't a debacle, but it's a caper that's fatally low on carbonation. Read full review
50
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreDec 8, 2010
The script piles the preposterous on top of the absurd and the film's thin charms dissipate, revealing the creaking movie star contraption underneath. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasDec 9, 2010
von Donnersmarck's meat-and-potatoes direction makes The Tourist astonishingly lifeless and awkward, reducing two of the world's biggest movie stars to something akin to shy, pimply teenagers on their first date. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDec 15, 2010
Without sizzle or thrills, The Tourist becomes as sluggish and rank as the Venice waterways. Read full review
40
Village VoiceMichelle OrangeDec 14, 2010
A different kind of surveillance thriller - an expensive, star-gazing Hollywood one. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 10, 2010
The movie dies onscreen; it might be the best advertisement for avoiding the glories of Italy ever released by a Hollywood distributor. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 9, 2010
Goes about its game so bloodlessly, the result is some of the most unexciting action and seduction sequences in recent memory. Read full review
40
EmpireKim NewmanDec 9, 2010
If you just want to look with admiration and Johnny and/or Angelina – and why wouldn't you? – this offers the full scenic tour, but it's one of those frustrating almost-good films which never really catches fire. Read full review
40
VarietyJustin ChangDec 8, 2010
Like a beautifully tailored suit that starts to smell funny after a few minutes, this sumptuous but stultifying lark sets up a quasi-Hitchcockian intrigue between two strangers abroad, but smothers any thrills or sparks in a haze of self-regard. Read full review
38
Washington PostJohn AndersonDec 9, 2010
Cinema-as-shoplifting is okay, as long as you still get the feeling it's for a greater good. But that's something The Tourist is sorely missing. Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanDec 9, 2010
The Critic's Code of Honor forbids me from explaining in detail why the storytelling is so inept, because I'd have to spoil the silly surprises. So I'll say only this: You can interpret the climax two ways, and both will probably infuriate you. Read full review
33
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 10, 2010
To see Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie in The Tourist is like watching a chemistry experiment gone horribly wrong. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesDec 10, 2010
Unfortunately, this is one of those movies with a twist ending that turns a character inside out, revealing earlier scenes to be essentially fraudulent and more or less invalidating one's emotional investment in the story. No one ever walked out of a Hitchcock movie feeling as cheated as this made me feel. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 9, 2010
There are all kinds of bad movies in the world, but it's really only stardom that can create the exact variety of cinematic abortion we find in The Tourist. Read full review
25
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 9, 2010
It may be the only movie ever to feature a bad performance by Johnny Depp, one of the best actors working in films. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 9, 2010
The film suffers from a severe lack of urgency and emotional engagement. You can't get involved in a movie in which the characters all seem to be harboring double identities. Read full review
20
SlateDana StevensDec 12, 2010
It's not so much the nonsensical nature of the plot that rankles; it's the movie's wrongheaded approach to the material. Read full review
20
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 8, 2010
Staggeringly misjudged in virtually every department, from the wannabe effervescent script to Johnny Depp's dopey hairdo. Read full review
10
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 9, 2010
This woefully botched mystery-adventure-thriller-caper-romance-comedy, or whatever it was meant to be, is no fun at all. Read full review
0
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 10, 2010
In a year of craptaculars, The Tourist deserves burial at the bottom of the 2010 dung heap. It offers talented people trapped in creative inertia. A microscope and a search party could not discover any trace of chemistry between Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. Read full review
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