Variety's Scores

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For 17,765 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,125 out of 17765
  2. Mixed: 7,004 out of 17765
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17765
17765 movie reviews
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    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It Happened One Night
    One of those stories that without a particularly strong plot manages to come through in a big way, due to the acting, dialog, situations and direction. In other words, the story has that intangible quality of charm which arises from a smooth blending of the various ingredients. Difficult to analyze, impossible to designedly reproduce. Just a happy accident.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flying Down to Rio
    This picture makes its bid via numbers staged by Dave Gould to Vincent Youman melodies. But Rio’s story [from a play by Anne Caldwell, based on an original story by Louis Brock] lets it down. It’s slow and lacks laughs to the point where average business seems its groove.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Son of Kong
    This is the sequel to and wash-up of the King Kong theme, consisting of salvaged remnants from the original production and rating as fair entertainment.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alice in Wonderland
    On the screen it is vividly realized in all its fantastic angles. The humor is genuine and the treatment satisfying on its literary side. But an hour and a quarter of it is overpoweringly sedative. [26 Dec 1933, p.10]
    • Variety
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Women
    Intelligent, grown up rendition of the Louisa Alcott classic.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Duck Soup
    In place of the constant punning and dame chasing, Duck Soup has the Marxes madcapping through such bits as the old Schwartz Bros. mirror routine, so well done in the hands of Groucho, Harpo and Chico that it gathers a new and hilarious comedy momentum all over again.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Invisible Man
    The strangest character yet created by the screen [from the novel by H.G. Wells] roams through The Invisible Man.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Blood of a Poet
    On the face of it, this film represents six reels of scraped together footage from off the cutting room floor. A more vague or hopeless mess could not have resulted.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Footlight Parade
    Footlight Parade is not as good as 42nd Street and Gold Diggers but the three socko numbers here eclipse some of the preceding Busby Berkeley staging for spectacle.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bombshell
    Here's a crackling comedy built out of the low down on Hollywood, elaborately dressed up with a lot of inside stuff, written with fine jaunty insouciance and acted with luscious abandon by a tip top cast. [24 Oct 1933, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cavalcade
    Cavalcade is about as well made as that subject could have been made for the screen. At first thought it would seem too foreign a matter for American consumption, but it’s the first big historical epic on England that means something over here. It’s so powerful and embracing that the matter of nationality and background is lost, or forgotten.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    King Kong
    Highly imaginative and super-goofy yarn.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    42nd Street
    Everything about the production rings true. It's as authentic to the initiate as the novitiate.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Man of Her Own
    It is largely the good cast, direction and some of the comedy arising mostly out of the wisecracks that makes No Man of Her Own acceptable film fare.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Three on a Match
    It amounts to a picture which has tried but failed to photographically decipher four characters. [01 Nov 1932, p.12]
    • Variety
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Dust
    Familiar plot stuff, but done so expertly it almost overcomes the basic script shortcomings and the familiar hot-love-in-the-isolated-tropics theme [from the play by Wilson Collison].
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grand Hotel
    The drama unfolds with a speed that never loses its grip, even for the extreme length of nearly two hours, and there is a captivating pattern of unexpected comedy that runs through it all, always fresh and always pat.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Horse Feathers
    The madcap Marxes, in one of their maddest screen frolics. The premise of Groucho Marx as the college prexy and his three aides and abettors putting Huxley College on the grid-iron map promises much and delivers more.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Number 17
    Like the play, the story is vague and, despite its intended eerieness, unconvincing. [02 Aug 1932, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Scarface
    Scarface contains more cruelty than any of its gangster picture predecessors, but there's a squarer for every killing. The blows are always softened by judicial preachments and sad endings for the sinners.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freaks
    Freaks is sumptuously produced, admirably directed, and no cost was spared. But Metro failed to realize that even with a different sort of offering the story still is important. Here it is not sufficiently strong to get and hold the interest, partly because interest cannot easily be gained for a too fantastic romance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shanghai Express
    Josef von Sternberg, the director, has made this effort interesting through a definite command of the lens. As to plot structure and dialog, Shanghai Express runs much too close to old meller and serial themes to command real attention. The finished product is an example of what can be done with a personality and photogenic face such as Marlene Dietrich possesses to circumvent a trashy story.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    The picture is infinitely better art – indeed, in many passages it is an astonishing fine bit of interpreting a classic, but as popular fare it loses in vital reaction.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mata Hari
    Though Garbo is sexy and hot in a less subtle way this time, and though the plot goes about as far as it can in situation warmth, the story presents nothing sensational.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Safe in Hell
    A sad and unsatisfactory finish is obviously an attempt to lend credence to an impossible yarn. It doesn't help, for as long as the story is thoroughly unbelievable up to the finish, no ending could change that impression. [22 Dec 1931, p.15]
    • Variety
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Frankenstein
    Looks like a Dracula plus, touching a new peak in horror plays and handled in production with supreme craftsmanship.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    The usual Marx madhouse and plenty of laughs sprouting from a plot structure resembling one of those California bungalows which spring up over night.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Skin Game
    With Alfred Hitchcock its director, more was expected. The story appears to be run through in a straight style as though closely following John Galsworthy's London stage hit.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Public Enemy
    There's no lace on this picture. It's raw and brutal. It's low-brow material given such workmanship as to make it high-brow.
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