Youth Without Youth
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 14, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
43
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
14
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
This film's playful visual language pulls you in rather than shuts you out; it isn't difficult to decipher, and it enables Coppola and his editor, Walter Murch, to navigate the story's many realms with a directness and dexterity that are refreshing. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Half the time in the mystical saga Youth Without Youth, I had no idea what the movie was about, but I always felt that the director and screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola, did, and that he was deeply in tune--and having a hell of a time--with the material. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
For all its fussy lighting, upside-down camera angles, and overwrought impressionism, Youth Without Youth is essentially playful. It's also pleasantly meandering in its largely faked locations, and drolly matter-of-fact about its mystic visions. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
In this film Mr. Coppola blurs dreams and everyday life and suggests that through visual and narrative experimentation he has begun the search for new ways of making meaning, new holy places for him and for us. He may not have found them yet, but, then, he’s just waking up. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Tt is a comeback, and if it leads the director to better work, it can be forgiven as a warm-up. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Beautiful but empty. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
How's this for a ringing endorsement: Watching Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola's first film in nearly a decade, is like taking a philosophy exam. A really tiring philosophy exam, where the questions are elegantly phrased but damn confounding and not really conducive to right answers. Read full review
63
PremiereGlenn Kenny
As a fan and well-wisher of Coppola's, I wanted very much to like this movie, and I'll probably give it another shot once the DVD comes out. But, at first sight, Youth Without Youth's striving for exuberance reveals an almost desperate effort too much of the time. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Too much of the film is a muddle, and it feels like work, not play. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
Ultimately, Youth Without Youth is more intriguing than it is satisfying. It hooks you, then lets you flounder. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
In the context of Coppola's life and career, the film has a searching intelligence and ambition that can't be entirely dismissed; with his own money and nobody looking over his shoulder, Coppola has gone uprriver again in an effort to reinvent himself and cinema in the process. He ultimately fails, but he can't be faulted for trying. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
An ambitious but mind-numbingly tedious and often incomprehensible film. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle Smith
I understood two words of Youth Without Youth: "The End." Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Lush and heartfelt, but compelling only in fits and starts. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
A vast, lumbering white elephant of a movie--but I sort of love it. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Coppola's awkward screenplay never finds its tone -- or perhaps it deliberately evokes the pulp conventions of WWII adventures, horror films, weepy melodrama, psychological mysteries and superhero origin stories as a way of evoking the fundamental artificiality of the cinema. Either way, it never comes together into a cohesive whole, and is seriously undermined by Roth's morose performance. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
At its best, the movie's crazy in unexpected and poetic ways; at its worst, merely preposterous. Read full review
40
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Unfortunately, "Youth" becomes so lost in its own conceptual, convoluted vortex, it becomes virtually incomprehensible. Coppola proves that even the best of our film artists can lose sight of what this medium is all about: entertaining, enlightening and including its audience. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
Lacking coherence and suspense, the picture is likely to attract a cult following while disappointing Coppola's fan base. Read full review
40
VarietyJay Weissberg
Attempting to harness multiple genres, pic is brought down by ponderous dialogue (much of it dubbed) and an inability to connect with its characters. Read full review
40
EmpireKim Newman
Not quite a complete write-off, but basically a folly. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The essence of Youth Without Youth, which was shot -- luminously -- in Romania, lies in its solemn speculations about aging, time and consciousness. Mr. Coppola is one of the cinema's peerless masters, and I would have enjoyed nothing more than a chance to celebrate his new film. I'm truly sorry to say, then, that I found it impenetrable. Read full review
40
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
I'm all for bold screwiness, but this provocation seems labored despite the striking images. Read full review
38
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Whatever it was in Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade's novella Youth Without Youth that drew Francis Coppola out of a 10-year retirement to make a movie, the result is the year's most bizarre novelty item. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film is a sharp disappointment to those who have been waiting for 10 years since the master's last film. The best that can be hoped is that, having made a film, Coppola has the taste again, and will go on to make many more, nothing like this. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Coppola never manages to get his themes to coalesce into anything terribly coherent. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Most certainly a personal work -- so personal, in fact, that I can't imagine anyone but Coppola being able to sit through it. Read full review
0
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The movie is one soporific, depressed, deadeningly vague scene after another. Read full review
0
SalonStephanie Zacharek
It's merely nutty, a picture that appears to have been made by an individual who has fallen off the edge of reason. Watching it was misery. Read full review
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