Vincent & Theo

Hemdale Film | Release Date: November 2, 1990

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

65	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Rita Kempley

Vincent & Theo is more than art appreciation, it is a treasure in its own right, unframed and arcing in the projector's light. Read full review

100

Jay Carr

Vincent and Theo is one of the great Robert Altman films... It's Altman's most structurally conventional film, although it's filled with such trademarks as overlapping conversations. It's also his most personal and deeply felt. [16 Nov 1990, p.81]

100

Ted Mahar

The film is uncommonly evocative. [19 Dec 1990, p.D6]

Staff [Not Credited]

One of Robert Altman’s most cinematically conventional films as well as one of his most deeply personal. Read full review

Roger Ebert

Altman's approach in Vincent & Theo is a very immediate, intimate one. He would rather show us things happening than provide themes and explanations. He is most concerned with the relationship that made the art possible. Read full review

Ray Sawhill

Altman has a sorcerer's ability to crack open scenes and invite us in to wander through them, and he keeps Vincent & Theo bristling with emotions and ideas. Read full review

Janet Maslin

The enjoyment in Vincent and Theo comes more from the director's attention to art history than from his ability to interpret it anew. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Vincent & Theo looks and feels like a half-baked PBS drama, and at two hours and 20 minutes the movie is hopelessly plodding. Still, see it for Roth, whose warts-and-all portrait of Van Gogh is an offbeat triumph. Read full review

David Sterritt

It has sharp performances in the title roles, by British actors Tim Roth and Paul Rhys, and its color scheme is so pungent I'm sure the real Van Gogh would applaud it. But it doesn't have the wide-ranging visual imagination of Mr. Altman's best work. [28 Nov 1990, p.14]

Peter Rainer

It's a tortuous, unsatisfying movie, but it's not like any other film I've ever seen about an artist, and it has sequences of blinding intensity. Read full review

Staff [Not Credited]

The heart and the luminous intelligence of Vincent van Gogh are deadened in Robert Altman's coolly distanced Vincent and Theo. [16 Nov 1990, p.E13]

Rick Groen

For all its merits - a lush canvas, a first-rate cast, a thoughtful director examining a theme directly relevant to his own checkered career - Vincent & Theo doesn't quite measure up. [16 Nov 1990]

EmpireAngie Errigo

Beautifully presented but over-long and best appreciated if you already have an idea of van Gogh's life and work. Read full review

Dave Kehr

Vincent & Theo is a by-the-numbers art biography that barely succeeds in recapping the best-known events in the life of its subject, Vincent van Gogh. There is something almost chilling in the degree of the director's evident disengagement from his material and the complete lack of craft with which he has filmed it. Read full review