Youth
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: December 4, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
11
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 18, 2015
Symphonic and cinematic, full of melancholy and hushed magic. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 3, 2015
Youth is a film that goes its own way. Quixotic, idiosyncratic, effortlessly moving, it's as much a cinematic essay as anything else, a meditation on the wonders and complications of life, an examination of what lasts, of what matters to people no matter their age. Read full review
100
VarietyJay WeissbergMay 23, 2015
Paolo Sorrentino, with Youth, delivers his most tender film to date, an emotionally rich contemplation of life’s wisdom gained, lost and remembered — with cynicism harping from the sidelines, but as a wearied chord rather than a major motif. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 23, 2015
Youth is a voluptuary’s feast, a full-body immersion in the sensory pleasures of the cinema. Read full review
91
HitfixGregory EllwoodMay 23, 2015
Youth has some significant points on frustration of fame, ageism and our natural inclination to lose perspective, but it’s primarily about finding peace and happiness in your life. That may sound painfully obvious. It may even sound cliché. But somehow Sorrentino is able to fashion the film's diverse elements into an emotional narrative that makes it all feel fresh and new. And that’s truly worth celebrating. Read full review
90
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 23, 2015
The wry, flamboyant cinematic opera of Paolo Sorrentino reaches new heights of showy, utterly tasteful magnificence in Youth. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 10, 2015
Though stylized and eccentric and non-linear in its narrative path, and filled with dazzling non-sequiturs and oddly cryptic storylines, Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth is indeed set on this Earth, and these characters are very much alive. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickDec 3, 2015
Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel do some of the best work of their careers playing longtime friends navigating their twilight years in Paolo Sorrentino’s witty, wise and swooningly beautiful dramatic comedy Youth. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 3, 2015
Youth is superior cinema, ardent and artful. Sorrentino, an Oscar winner for The Great Beauty, fills every frame with ravishing images that evoke his idol, Fellini. Gloriously shot by Luca Bigazzi and scored by David Lang, the movie engulfs you like a dream. Read full review
83
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerDec 14, 2015
Unlike in some of the filmmaker’s past work, however, Youth foregrounds the performance over the spectacle; Keitel turns in some of his finest work in years as the aging, fiery Mick, and Caine delivers a performance composed of untold multitudes. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnMay 23, 2015
With each new twist, Sorrentino is always one step ahead of his audience, building a narrative that skips along at an enthralling pace. Read full review
80
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlDec 4, 2015
Sorrentino, as always, invests his scenarios with a feeling and beauty that transcends the dreary specifics Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovDec 16, 2015
Sorrentino’s film tackles the most important of all life’s questions with wit, wisdom, and no small amount of often-surreal humor. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 24, 2015
Youth is a movie of dreamscapes and insinuated feelings, gorgeous and puzzling at once. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 24, 2015
Although not quite as over-the-top visually as his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, Youth is still spectacular, filled with tableaux (a group of people sweating silently inside a sauna, a naked man and his prostitute inside a hotel room) that juxtapose the desires and personalities of young and old without dialogue. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianJeff BakerDec 22, 2015
It feels more like a retreat for all involved, a chance to kick back and bounce some ideas off each other and the surrounding mountains. Several of them stick and give Youth an emotional core that covers the bare spots. Caine and Keitel, old pros on the home stretch, deserve nothing less. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 21, 2015
There are times when it borders on the pretentious but there’s a real, emotional payoff and it doesn’t hurt that veteran actors Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel give Top 10 career performances. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 15, 2015
The surprises are rewarding, the irony expressed with the perfect touch of drollery and the climax beautifully handled, even if the film goes on one scene too long past that. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsDec 4, 2015
Aat some point, every character in Youth falls out of love with the way of seeing the world. That kind of anti-epiphany is major—not on a universal, but rather a personal scale. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittDec 4, 2015
The film’s greatest strength is its major team-up. Caine and Keitel have an electric chemistry when they’re onscreen together. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloDec 2, 2015
Youth is slightly less garish and bombastic than his Italian pictures (which include The Great Beauty and Il Divo), but it’s no less free-associative, building meaning from juxtapositions that feel largely intuitive. If you’re on Sorrentino’s wavelength, that can feel liberating. If not, “oppressive” might be a better word. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 17, 2015
Sorrentino drenches his audiences in the movie-going experience — when you’re done, it’s something akin to enjoying a rich meal, even if you didn’t quite understand how all the ingredients combined. All that’s important is that it satisfies, and ultimately, Youth does. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 3, 2015
As it is, Youth is hit-and-miss, beautiful and frustrating. Read full review
65
TheWrapRobert AbeleDec 2, 2015
If “The Great Beauty” was a heady, humming party you wanted to live inside, Youth — its melancholy and splendor too often at odds — never rises above feeling like a pretty, meandering gallery show. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 10, 2015
Youth is, among many other things, a lovely valentine to both Caine and Keitel, two performers who have seen it all and know what to do with it. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 10, 2015
Youth is intoxicating, I’ll admit. Had I never tasted this wine before, I could easily see myself yearning for another glass. But this time it feels like an old vintage in a new bottle, one that’s grown slightly stale rather than better with age. Read full review
60
EmpirePhil de SemlyenJan 25, 2016
An Alpine study of ageing and creativity that’s as fresh and bracing as the mountain air, although occasionally just as chilly. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonDave CalhounDec 24, 2015
Visually, it’s never less than arresting. Gently amusing, too, is the relationship between Keitel and Caine, even if the dialogue Sorrentino writes for them often displays a fondness for empty epigrams. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 23, 2015
There are lightning-flashes of pure, ornamental brilliance throughout Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, although there’s not much happening on the landscape they illuminate. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 23, 2015
The film is often remarkable, gorgeous even - many of the shots in Youth would make excellent closing shots, including the opening shot - and funny. It's a work of wonderful moments, but it's less than momentous and, significantly, you'll never believe a single word of it. This is a pity as the performances are excellent. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 23, 2015
Youth has a wan eloquence and elegance, though freighted with sentimentality and a strangely unearned and uninteresting macho-geriatric regret for lost time, lost film projects, lost love and all those beautiful women that you never got to sleep with. Read full review
58
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 23, 2015
There is no shading, there is no ambiguity, and while there are observations and stilted epithets aplenty, there is precious little wisdom. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenDec 24, 2015
Freighted with symbolism and beautifully mounted, Youth is dreamlike and at the same time stultifying. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 3, 2015
The problem with Youth is not that it’s empty — the accusation Kael and others lodged against Mr. Sorrentino’s precursors — but that it’s small. Its imagination feels shrunken and secondhand, in spite of the gorgeous vistas and beautiful naked women. Or actually, because of them. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 30, 2015
The movie is gorgeous, as you would expect from Sorrentino, but beauty this great can lead to suffocation. The plot goes round and round and nowhere, and the highlight is a couple of blistering monologues — one from Weisz, delivered while she is cloaked in mud, and another from Jane Fonda, as an aging screen goddess, encased in her own crust of powder and Botox. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 4, 2015
Sorrentino’s magic is all smoke and mirrors. People calling this movie a visual feast must be awfully famished. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriDec 4, 2015
Though often beautiful, this is an emotionally paralyzed film about emotionally paralyzed people. Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJan 2, 2016
For all the talk about passion, the main feeling Youth conveys is self-pity. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineJake ColeNov 30, 2015
As ever, Paolo Sorrentino ironically cuts the legs out from under his protagonists' wistfulness with grotesquerie. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsStephen Whitty Dec 2, 2015
Youth is fleeting. "Youth" is not. In fact, you may feel yourself getting older just watching it. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 3, 2015
From early on my strong desire was for this horribly pretentious phantasmagoria to be over. Read full review
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