White Noise
Netflix Studios | Release Date: November 25, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
14
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
ABC NewsPeter TraversDec 30, 2022
Noah Baumbach thonors Don DeLillo’s virtuoso 1985 novel about the comic-absurdist chaos of consumerism with a too cautious respect. The result is his most constricted film which only breaks free when he allows costars Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig to fly on their own wings. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeDec 9, 2022
Few film adaptations so awkwardly aligned deliver quite so many full-on belly laughs. It doesn’t exactly work but, no, we won’t throw “bore” at the filmmakers. Read full review
60
EmpireJohn NugentNov 29, 2022
A strange brew. While the family dynamics and capitalist satire work a little better than the outlandish spectacle, White Noise at least appears to herald an ambitious new phase in Noah Baumbach’s career. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottNov 23, 2022
There is something detached about the film, a succession of moods and notions that are often quite interesting but that never entirely cohere. White Noise is an expression of sincere and admirable faith. I just wish I could believe in it. Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 31, 2022
As a movie, White Noise announces its themes loudly and proudly, but the trouble is that it announces them more than it makes you feel them. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyAug 31, 2022
There’s much to appreciate in Noah Baumbach’s alternately exhilarating and enervating attempt to tame Don DeLillo’s comedy of death, White Noise, not least the daredevil spirit and ambition with which the writer-director and his cast plunge into the tricky material. But little in this episodic freakout hits the target quite so well as the wild end credits sequence. Read full review
60
TheWrapRobert AbeleAug 31, 2022
Baumbach’s textural/visual/sonic approach is stylish enough that even when White Noise is just churning along, there’s always a keen detail to absorb or killer observation to take in, if not an emotion to latch onto. Read full review
58
Original-CinKaren GordonDec 1, 2022
The ideas are there. You can see why Baumbach would take this on. In the end, what we’re left feels like more of a sincere and heartfelt attempt than a successful movie. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsJan 2, 2023
Baumbach overreaches in White Noise. The movie is unsuccessful because its various energies eventually begin to feel mismeasured. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 18, 2022
I’m afraid this is another case of Netflix’s Big Blank Check indulging a filmmaker, who cashed it and lost himself in the “White Noise” superficialities while never quite wrestling a perhaps-unfilmable novel into shape. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekSep 2, 2022
It’s hard to know exactly what Baumbach is going for here, other than perhaps reminding us that the key to living is just going about your life. But you probably don’t need two hours and 16 minutes’ worth of movie to tell you that. Read full review
50
Vanity FairRichard LawsonAug 31, 2022
The story’s themes—fear of death, societal atomization at the dawn of the information age—are clearly stated, but there’s little passion pulsing beneath the thesis. It’s a respectful, and respectable, film to a fault; it’s hard to locate the animating why of White Noise. Despite some alterations, the film seems to exist more as a recitation of the book than its own kind of invention. Read full review
50
ColliderBrian FormoAug 31, 2022
Satire is one of the trickiest things to translate from page to screen and White Noise never really cuts as deep as it should because the communication of the jokes is so rushed — via DeLillo’s style that’s quicker to process on the page than it is to export to the screen. Read full review
40
CNNBrian LowryDec 29, 2022
Pretty easy to tune out. Read full review
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