Hemingway and Gellhorn
HBO | Release Date: May 28, 2012
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
54
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
7
Negative:
5

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyKen TuckerMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: Both writers come off as passionate egomaniacs with literary gifts so undeniable, you can't help but enjoy them. Read full review
83
Uncle BarkyEd BarkMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: Despite some shortcomings, Hemingway & Gellhorn rates as time and money well-spent. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalDorothy RabinowitzMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: That this rich, impressively ambitious film says far more about Martha Gellhorn than about Ernest Hemingway was inevitable. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: A dynamic, vivid, well-acted look at two major 20th century writers who shared wars on the battlefront and at home. Read full review
75
New York PostLinda StasiMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: Get past the first hour and you've got a helluva good tale. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: Kaufman's film, despite some flaws, captures the intensity of their story and pulls us in with the irresistible force of a great, doomed love story. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: HBO's woozy and often intoxicating Hemingway & Gellhorn [is] a sprawling docudrama (overlong at 160 minutes) about glamorous world adventurers whose weapons are words. Read full review
70
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: It's not as if Kidman or Owen looks old, exactly. Still, the basic dynamic is a bit out-of-kilter. A lot of the early scenes don't make much sense if the Gellhorn we see is so clearly a mature, experienced woman. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Matt Zoller SeitzMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: the film is as smart and sexy as it is extravagantly silly; its silliness is knowing and affectionate. Read full review
67
NewsdayVerne GayMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: Stellar production, famous leads. What's missing? Heart. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: While Hemingway & Gellhorn makes it clear she had world-class writing skills of her own, Gellhorn's story often does feel subsumed here, as if all of Hemingway's swagger and bravado really did make him a more prominent figure, or at least a more interesting one. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesLori RacklMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: Their inherently compelling story is cheapened by too many gimmicks and a lack of focus, sins that the writers Hemingway and Gellhorn managed to avoid in real life. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesRobert LloydMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: Though it is clearly based on research, with dialogue that scavenges the principals' own writing--it is never quite believable, either as history or drama. Read full review
50
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen GrayMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: It offers tantalizing glimpses of other movies it might have been. Read full review
40
Washington PostHank StueverMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: Hemingway & Gellhorn is overly enamored with its ridiculous sense of sweep. Read full review
40
SlateTroy PattersonMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: Hemingway & Gellhorn's daft romanticization of its subjects proves central to its overwrought sense of self. Read full review
40
VarietyBrian LowryMay 24, 2012
Season 1 Review: Considerable effort and care clearly went into that process, but unlike the city by the Bay, there's not much heart left in Hemingway & Gellhorn. Read full review
38
People WeeklyTom GliattoMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: Clive Owen teams with Nicole Kidman for a long, lopsided slog through the life of Ernest Hemingway and war journalist Martha Gellhorn. [4 Jun 2012, p.42]
30
The New York TimesMike HaleMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: It's a disheartening misfire: a big, bland historical melodrama built on platitudes about honor and the writing life that crams in actual figures and incidents but does little to illuminate them, or to make us care about the romance at its center. Read full review
25
Boston HeraldMark A. PerigardMay 29, 2012
Season 1 Review: Director Philip Kaufman's clumsy, bloated project--clocking in at a miserable two hours and 40 minutes--stars Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman in potentially career-mangling performances. Read full review
10
SalonWilla PaskinMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: A disastrous two-and-a-half-hour Cliffs Notes on the passionate, dysfunctional love affair between Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen) and his third wife, the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman). Read full review
0
The Huffington PostMaureen RyanMay 25, 2012
Season 1 Review: Not only is Hemingway and Gellhorn wretched, it is bathed in pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectual delusions of grandeur. It's not just crap, it's expensive, painfully "artistic" crap starring a lot of actors who should have known better once they took a look at the script, which is hilariously awful. Read full review
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