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Ask the Dust
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 13 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Romance
Written by:
Robert Towne
John Fante (novel)
Directed by: Robert Towne
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 10, 2006
DVD: July 25, 2006
Running Time: 117 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R or some sexuality, nudity and language
Starring Colin Farrell, Salma Hayek, Donald Sutherland, Eileen Atkins, Idina Menzel, William Mapother, and Tamara Craig Thomas
Adapted from a novel by John Fante, Robert Towne's Ask the Dust stars Colin Farrell as Arturo Bandini, a young writer who comes to Los Angeles during the Great Depression to write a novel.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Tequila Sunrise
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Ask the Dust is more than an amorous period piece. It's a strongly bitter, strongly sweet poem in prose and motion.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
More than anything else, Ask the Dust feels like a compendium of desires - for a city, for a woman, for youth.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Ask The Dust may find Towne a little past his prime, but after so much time in the Hollywood wilderness, it's good to see him trying again.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Occasionally overrated as a writer but consistently underrated as a director, Towne does a marvelous job resurrecting all the seedy jumble of the long-gone Bunker Hill neighborhood.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
At a time when juvenile movies often dominate theaters, this is an adult movie through-and-through, and evidence that there are filmmakers who care about entertaining a more mature audience.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Its portrait of an artist hungry for experience is as timely today as when it was written.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Ask the Dust does manage to cast a spell. The film is not only an evocation of a bygone era but an emanation of it as well.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Ask the Dust requires an audience with a special love for film noir, with a feeling for the loneliness and misery of the writer.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Eccentric, miscast (though stimulatingly so), not for all tastes but far from flavorless.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
To Towne's credit, he's a thoughtful and conscientious romantic. He skillfully makes the two main characters a hot, volatile couple, deftly staging their courtship as if it were an erotic grudge match.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
What seduces most about Ask the Dust isn't its verisimilitude, but its gloriously old-fashioned backlot sheen - the L.A. of old Hollywood movies and of our collective fantasies.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden
The film is faithful to the book's tone of dark ache and much of its detail and for the most part terrifically cast. But Towne can't overcome an essential challenge of the material: Arturo and Camilla are constructs and ciphers as much as they are vivid characters -- difficult roles, to be sure. Neither the screenplay nor the actors manage to get far under their skin.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
Thirty years of gestation have produced a film of great beauty with unfulfilled promise - a disappointment, but with much to recommend and be glad about.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The film, which is literary to a fault, includes an earthquake, but if the earth moves at all, thank Hayek, who gives the tale a smoldering life that finally lifts it from the page.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
The sepia-tinted palette of Ask the Dust drips, reeks and creaks of the seamy side of a city that takes more often than it gives.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
After an hour or so, Ask the Dust seems to have said everything, and the air starts to seep out of its hermetic atmosphere.
Read Full Review >Empire Kim Newman
A curiously resistable drama, despite several strong elements - the most notable being newcomer Idina Menzel.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Something is missing, though. The themes are all there, but the movie doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier and rev you up.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Farrell's performance possesses a touch too many mannerisms on loan from Tyrone Power and Clark Gable; you can almost hear the gears turning in his brain each time he cocks his head or raises an eyebrow in homage.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Highlighted by a strong and sensual performance from Salma Hayek as the doomed heroine, elegant pic's muted quality and the central character's vexingly contrary behavior will keep auds from connecting with characters who themselves have trouble establishing bonds.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Miscast, constricted, loose in tone and meandering in intent, it has far fewer moments of inspiration than unintended laughter.
Read Full Review >Premiere John Migliore
Farrell and Hayek are two beautiful people with absolutely no chemistry. Even when they're lying in bed together, they're so far apart that they might as well be in different movies.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Peter Debruge
It would seem Towne is too much in love with the book to recognize its fundamental limitations as a film.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Ask the Dust is the ghost of a cult novel; it can't bring itself to life.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Ask the Dust is beautifully shot -- sepia becomes the ravishing, affecting Ms. Hayek. Unfortunately the images of the heaving waves of the Pacific in the moonlight, of mountains rising over scrub and cactus in the sunlight here, serve only to emphasize the emptiness of the drama unfolding in the foreground.
USA Today Claudia Puig
Though the film offers a meticulously rendered Depression-era L.A., it's not in the same league as "Chinatown," for which Towne wrote an Oscar-winning script. Here, the characters seem shallow, their motivations murky.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Watching it is like being in a restaurant where the waiter brings out a luscious platter of food, then keeps walking right past you. All night long.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Farrell is badly miscast as an ethnic Italian with an inferiority complex, the star-crossed love story has very little emotional pull, and even the (heavily CGI-enhanced) period atmosphere ultimately seems rather forced and self-conscious.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Alternately grandiose and abject, Bandini is a sort of underground man, and if no more miscast than usual, heartthrob Colin Farrell miserably fails to convincingly render Bandini's neurosis.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
One of the most eagerly awaited cinematic projects of 2006, which may be why it lands with such a curious thud.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
This story, like many of Towne's own, does not come with a happy ending. Or beginning, for that matter, because it's almost immediately clear that Ask the Dust bites the dust -- his dream movie is stillborn.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
The film is a particular disappointment considering its pedigree.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The movie lacks even the misplaced fervor of obsession. It's lifeless kitsch.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Miguel V. gave it an8:
It was the film that led me to reading the book – a masterpiece – and yet the latter is far more intense and dramatic. Even though Towne decided to replace the tragic ending of the original for a milder finale and greatly impregnated the whole story with a strong preoccupation over ethnic issues, he literally transcribed entire lines of the book to the first scenes of the movie. Thus, what may have been seen by many as a tiresome introduction was in fact one of the most vivid sections of the film with a fine performance of Colin Farrell, who gave an appropriate voice to and convincingly incarnated the neurotic Arturo Bandini, “lover of men and beast alike”.
Fred D. gave it a4:
Hard to watch. stilted and lifeless. too much dialog simply states and restates the obvious. looked good though. the actors are at the mercy of this anachronistic stuff. ugh.
Fred D. gave it a4:
Hard to watch. stilted and lifeless. too much dialog simply states and restates the obvious. looked good though. the actors are at the mercy of this anachronistic stuff. Ugh.
Frank D gave it a1:
I've seen a hefty percantage of films released in 2006, and this was one was hands-down, the worst. I saw other ones that were terrible, but at least some of them had a few redeeming qualities, if nothing else, unintentionally funny. This one plays likes one long prison sentence. The main reason I bother to post a comment at all is to say that I've seen four movies starring hot boy-du-jour Colin Farrell (Alexander, Phone Booth, A Home at the End of the World, plus this dreck). Except for his intense good looks, what do film directors see in this guy??? I think he is truly a poor actor. All hyoe, no delivery.("Troy Donahue of the new millenium"). Hopefully, he'll disappear soon, and we can return to watching real actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, and others who are far more worthy of their salaries and our ticket money and attnetion.
Pete M. gave it a7:
This is a flawed film featuring fine performances from Salma Hayek and Collin Farrell. I think the work of the actors along with the fine story and visual beauty more than compensate for the underdevelopment of some of the main elements of the plot. This is certainly a film that feels bogged down by the depth of its source material and struggling to match the effects of the book. It is still certainly worth a look, particularly the section featuring Idina Menzel whose character hauntingly lingers with you long after she’s off the screen.
Jay E. gave it a1:
This film was so dreadful, my wife has relieved me for cause as the movie chooser. One scene alone really worked: the hero's being nearly overwhelmed by nighttime surf; and even that scene was too long by half. Many of the others were ludicrous: a desperate down-and-outer spending his last dime on a beer which he then pours into a spitoon to spite a waitress he dislikes ; a destitue Mexican waitresswho can't afford proper shoes, but owns an automobile; an earthquake which leaves its dead victims atop, rather than buried by, fallen buildings; a TB victim on her death bed looking like a cover girl and using her last breath to deliver fluent, Dale Carnegie-like advice onthe value of making a good first impression. This woefully miscast mess lacked credibility, continuity and character development. My genteel wife said it all " I hate this expression, but that movie truly sucked." [The 1 point is for set dressing]
Billy S. gave it a7:
ok, its not Chinatown, but compared to seeing Basic Instinct 2 or Failure to Launch, It is. More than worth the price of admission just to see two hours of Caleb Deschanel's cinematography and Dennis Gassner's production design. Selma Hayek is the definition of Movie Star and Colin Farrell is slowly getting to a new level on the acting tree.
