Cinema Verite
  • Network: HBO
  • Series Premiere Date: Apr 23, 2011
Metascore
74

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 23
  3. Negative: 0 out of 23

Critic Reviews

  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: David Wiegand
    Apr 21, 2011
    100
    Even without the original source material, Cinema Verite offers provocative insight into how far we've become lost in the reality-TV wilderness in the past 40 years.
  2. Newsday
    Reviewed by: Verne Gay
    Apr 20, 2011
    100
    Not a dull or wasted moment, and Lane may have just turned in the one of the best performances of her career.
  3. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Tim Goodman
    Apr 15, 2011
    100
    In Cinema Verite, 90 minutes might not do justice to the historical impact of An American Family. But it makes you wish there were 90 more minutes to the story, which is saying something.
  5. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Dorothy Rabinowitz
    Apr 15, 2011
    100
    They [the Loud family] are to the contrary enlarged, explained, their family loyalty honored, in a film that ends up packing an emotional punch that's as surprising as it is eloquent.
  6. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ken Tucker
    Apr 15, 2011
    91
    This wonderful docudrama about its [An American Family] making, chronicles a loss of media innocence. [22/29 Apr 2011, p.92]
  7. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Paige Wiser
    Apr 21, 2011
    88
    At the end, Cinema Verite shows how the Louds dealt with the notoriety after the series aired, and where they are now. Cinema Verite blurs the lines even more - but there's a perverse logic to that.
  8. Boston Herald
    Reviewed by: Mark A. Perigard
    Apr 25, 2011
    83
    Additional time would have made Verite more convincing. At 90 minutes, it runs short, especially as the family copes with its newfound notoriety
  9. Uncle Barky
    Reviewed by: Ed Bark
    Apr 21, 2011
    83
    Cinema Verite's strength is in dramatizing the off-camera seductions and betrayals that led to the Louds being vilified in many quarters before the entire family went on The Dick Cavett Show to both tell their side of the story and confront filmmaker Craig Gilbert.
  10. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Hal Boedeker
    Apr 25, 2011
    80
    Cinema Verite is short (not even 90 minutes), smooth and brisk.
  11. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Glenn Garvin
    Apr 25, 2011
    80
    HBO's drama Cinema Verite is a searing and irresistible look at the making of An American Family and an incisive dissection of the mendacity of what we so absurdly call reality TV.
  12. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Matthew Gilbert
    Apr 21, 2011
    80
    A finely constructed docu-dramatic piece, Cinema Verite folds together the stories of the Louds of Santa Barbara and the PBS filmmakers who took over their home, and it adds in both real and expertly re-created footage from the 12 episodes of "An American Family."
  13. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Linda Stasi
    Apr 21, 2011
    75
    Cinema Verite works in the same off-kilter way that HBO's "Grey Gardens" worked.
  14. TV Guide Magazine
    Reviewed by: Matt Roush
    Apr 22, 2011
    70
    HBO's punchy, pungent but ultimately facile Cinema Verite dramatizes the making of 1973's revolutionary PBS (!) docu-series An American Family, a precursor to today's exhibitionistic "reality" freak shows.
  15. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: Rob Humanick
    Apr 25, 2011
    63
    Looks notwithstanding, these TV and movie vets fashion thoughtful, flesh-and-blood individuals whose efforts at achieving happiness seem locked in a perpetual reach for self-awareness. Too bad they're nearly wasted in this hour and a half of paint-by-colors television.