|
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
80
Mixed:
31
Negative:
2
|
Watch Now
| Stream On |
|
Critic Reviews
Jun 27, 2022
Season 4 Review:
One misses the way earlier iterations of the "Westworld" operating system kept us guessing. Now that we know how the show works, it's easy to bird-dog the secrets hiding in plain sight. ... Regardless of the slack in other plotlines, [Maeve and Caleb's] propulsive force is sufficient reason to stick around and see where this season is going.
Read full review
Jun 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
Taken on their own, then, the first four episodes of “Westworld’s” fourth season are often fun, with spiky and interesting moments sprinkled amid other elements that feel like filler. As a serious fan of the show’s early going, I will settle for “often fun.” But it’s hard to imagine that “Westworld’s” two creators — writers who set out, thrillingly, to investigate what it means to be human and who now are losing us within the maze they keep complicating — can.
Read full review
Mar 13, 2020
Season 3 Review:
It’s the most frustratingly not-quite-there show on TV: structurally bold, visually arresting, often brilliantly acted, show-off-ily erudite (to the point of having three rich folks argue the accuracy of a Plutarch quote during a society gala), and woefully predisposed to turn subtext into text. But its sense of dread is so effective that it draws even skeptical viewers into its narrative mazes.
Read full review
The Daily BeastMar 11, 2020
Season 3 Review:
Season three is a blessedly streamlined one. Provided you can grasp the general gist of who’s alive, who’s a host, and who knows what is “real.” ... But this new, simpler Westworld is also no fun. ... All this said, there’s an unmistakable confidence this go-round, a steady hand at the helm that appeared all-but severed as season two neared its end.
Read full review
Mar 6, 2020
Season 3 Review:
These episodes definitely feel less frustrating when viewed through the “final season” lens — but if Nolan and Joy are sticking to their five-to-six-season “plan,” I hope they find a way to bring things back to the parks. [Kristen's Grade: B-]
I enjoy a few aspects of this new season, Kristen. After seeing four episodes of the (notably reduced) eight-episode season, though, my main feeling is I really enjoyed the show about cowboy robots in a theme park that apparently ended years ago. [Darren's Grade: C]
Read full review
Sep 30, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Hopkins and Wright are excellent, as is Ed Harris as a guest who’s grown so comfortable in his role-playing of the Gunslinger that he says he rarely leaves Westworld. Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton--playing an innocent farm girl and a jaded brothel madam, respectively--do very well in the context of Westworld’s inherently problematic sexual element. ... But much of the necessary scene-setting--of happy guests arriving and discovering the joys of shooting and screwing to their hearts’ content--becomes repetitive quickly.
Read full review
The PlaylistJun 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
If it all sounds like “Westworld” is still ridiculously narratively divided and convoluted, it undeniably is, and the show continues to have a frustrating habit of over-writing itself into ridiculously long passages of exposition. ... But it’s encouraging to see actors like Harris, Wright, and Paul have more fun than they were in the drag of a third season.
Read full review
IndieWireJun 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
There’s still so much more room for “Westworld” to break its icy tension with clever levity, or just enjoy the bizarre nature of its wild reality. (This is still the show with replica robots and cloning, yet it never duplicates the fun of a “Mission: Impossible”-style mask reveal.) Instead, it’s resolved to do what its done before to the best of its abilities, like a piece of A.I. tasked with replicating the human experience, but tapping out after it learns “excitement” and “deception.”
Read full review
IndieWireMar 6, 2020
Season 3 Review:
Season 3 isn’t that fun — not yet. Though these first four episodes are much easier to track than Season 2 and remain flat-out gorgeous in their polished vision of a robot-led tech war, “Westworld” is a rather empty beauty. It shed all that Season 2 weight, and yet it could still stand to lose more. Episodes run far too long.
Read full review
Sep 29, 2016
Season 1 Review:
I’m therefore hesitant to write Westworld off as a dreary trot from start to finish; parts of it are as imaginative and intriguing as anything that’s been on TV recently, particularly in the sci-fi realm. It’s definitely not the cyborg “Deadwood” that some HBO fans were actively wishing for, nor does it roll out the welcome mat as a riveting, accessible adventure.
Read full review
Mar 12, 2020
Season 3 Review:
What we mainly get in the early episodes (four of the season’s eight were available) is a pretty straightforward version of Los Angeles corporate noir, with debts to “Blade Runner” and the films of Michael Mann. ... The returning cast, though, still offers the value that the show’s writing and plotting can’t consistently deliver. ... That they can’t always jolt the show to life, or overcome its tendency toward a critical mass of self-consciousness and ponderous seriousness, isn’t their fault.
Read full review
Mar 11, 2020
Season 3 Review:
The acting remains fantastic, as substantial storylines for Paul and Thompson (who finally gets the challenging material she deserves) complement the consistently sharp performances of Wood, Newton and Wright. Action scenes are as slick as ever. Sadly, though, all that polish effectively functions as a distraction from the aimlessness of what is starting to feel like a loose collection of characters, ideas and cool narrative tricks in search of a story.
Read full review
Mar 11, 2020
Season 3 Review:
The new season certainly has its moments, and the idea of Maeve and Dolores working at cross-purposes is intriguing. Ultimately, though, Westworld is always gonna Westworld. As Dolores puts it to Caleb, “I thought your world would be so different from mine. There isn’t any difference at all.”
Read full review
Mar 11, 2020
Mar 11, 2020
Apr 19, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Maeve supplies rare flashes of wit to a series that often equates humorlessness with seriousness of purpose. ... A low opinion of humankind may be a prerequisite to full enjoyment of the series. The viewer, less confused by the weave of time lines, is on firmer footing this season, but the show continues to obscure motivation to the point of making motivation irrelevant.
Read full review
Apr 18, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Maeve is fun to be around. She’s self-contained and withering and she takes us to new, admittedly very gory places. When the show is about her, it zips along, making sense. Dolores, on the other hand, speaks in vagaries and prophecies, clearly a part of the series’ Reddit-bait. ... Westworld itself is the Rickroll. However annoying and tedious certain parts of it are, it’s never gonna give them up.
Read full review
Sep 30, 2016
Season 1 Review:
When the guests--and we--have trouble telling the robots from the humans, things can get murky. Particularly when some of the "hosts" begin to show signs of remembering the traumas they've endured. It's as though the targets in a first-person shooter game suddenly developed PTSD. I think this is meant to bother us, but I don't know how long it will, based on the four episodes I've seen (there are 10 this season). ... The opportunity to watch Anthony Hopkins in a weekly series would alone be reason to watch, and here he's surrounded by people who can play at his level.
Read full review
Sep 29, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Westworld’s first episode is very strong, and its second nearly as good. It swiftly builds a world built on a deeply disturbing power dynamic that could make a decent metaphor for just about anything you choose. And then it backs away. ... Having achieved nuclear fusion, they abandon it for a backup generator, focusing on a needless mythology and quest narratives swiped from Lost’s discarded ideas board.
Read full review
Sep 28, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Lacking much in the way of humanizing balance in that world behind the curtain, Westworld eventually feels cold and cynical and is yet another HBO series peddling violence, marvelous costume design and poet dialogue in the guise of some great philosophical statement about humanity. What that observation may be exactly is unclear.
Read full review
Jun 26, 2022
Season 4 Review:
"Westworld" returns, featuring several familiar faces in unfamiliar roles, while extending aspects of a third season that creatively sailed off the rails. While there is surely intelligent life out there eager to see where this goes, at this point it's not so much a question of not being able to follow the series through its convoluted maze as simply not feeling as if it's worth the energy to try.
Read full review
Current TV Shows
By MetascoreBy User Score