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Casanova
EMAILPRINTBuena Vista Pictures
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 36 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 40 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Adventure | Comedy | Drama | Romance
Written by:
Jeffrey Hatcher
Kimberly Simi (also story)
Michael Cristofer (story)
Directed by: Lasse Hallström
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 25, 2005
DVD: April 25, 2006
Running Time: 108 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for some sexual content
Starring Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Oliver Platt, and Lena Olin
1700s Venice. He was the legendary adventurer whose amorous dalliances would go on to inspire countless lovers throughout the centuries. She was the most virtuoso writer of her time who was waiting to find that rare man with a true understanding of steadfastness and passion. When Giacomo Casanova (Ledger) discovers Francesca Bruni (Miller), he met his ultimate romantic match, succumbing to the only woman ever to refuse his charms -- until he could prove himself to be one man worthy of her romantic ideals. (Touchstone Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: An Unfinished Life Chocolat The Cider House Rules The Hoax The Shipping News
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
A lovely, mischievous Casanova that will sweep you off your feet.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Hallstrom gives us a genial interpretation and a supremely good-humored film.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat) directs a sparking screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (Stage Beauty) and Kimberly Simi; it starts as a frothy boudoir comedy but evolves into a masquerade by turns sweetly meditative and sharply satirical.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
In the exhilarating Casanova, giddy shenanigans effectively set off the dangerous, darker impulses of human nature.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Phil Hall
A delightfully silly romp which reinvents the legendary Italian lover's adventures into the realm of broad farce.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
A handsome chunk of widescreen entertainment that's as nimble as its rakish hero.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Among the least-heralded of the Christmas releases, Casanova is one of the few that's wholly enjoyable.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
And if real eroticism is missing - this is a Disney movie, with bosoms heaving more in a gentle parody of heaving than in full desire - the great discovery of this Casanova is Hallström's recovered capacity for play.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Casanova is an entertaining if silly romp, with amusing dialogue, gorgeous production design and painterly cinematography. Venice, where the movie is set, has never been so breathtaking.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
In any case, what is on screen is a delightful respite from awards-season seriousness - a feather film, you might say, that actually tickles.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Melissa Levine
It's a sweet, silly and not unintelligent romantic comedy: For a period farce, you could do worse.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
Hallström's latest is fine but unambitious, content with what it is – an arthouse trifle for the masses.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
As with his other costume farce, "Stage Beauty" (with Billy Crudup and Claire Danes), Hatcher produces more froth than zest.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The feisty supporting cast is forced to carry the show, and fortunately, they're more than up to it, notably Olin, Platt and Jeremy Irons.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Little by little, though, he (Ledger)and those around him achieve a critical mass -- an extremely light critical mass -- and the plot pops with entertaining complications.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Although Casanova is far from a stinker, I can't join in the chorus of praise for what is essentially a coy farce replete with arch performances and even archer dialogue.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Unfortunately, the goofiness never quite finds its groove. The romantic chemistry is tepid, the comedy misses as often as it hits, the picaresque plot keeps dogging down and even actors as skilled as Platt, Irons and Lena Olin fail to register strongly in their roles.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
That the new Casanova lacks such wit is fatal. Heath Ledger is a good actor but Hallstrom's film is busy and unfocused, giving us the view of Casanova's ceaseless activity but not the excitement. It's a sitcom when what is wanted is comic opera.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
What happens when movie producers cross "Three's Company" with "Masterpiece Theater?" The result would be similar to what Touchstone Pictures has provided with Casanova, a farcical romantic comedy period piece.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
The movie cries out for the bawdy, rompy air that filled Richard Lester's "Three Musketeers" movies, and what it gets instead is the same dispassionate "professionalism" that has made Hallström a steady fixture in a Hollywood that could do with an infusion of Casanova's own virile lifeblood.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Don't confuse the 18th-century Vene tian setting in Casanova with sophisti cation. The film's one-dimensional characters and lame one-liners make it a sitcom with petticoats.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
The movie Casanova, starring Heath Ledger, not only fetters the randy Venetian in political correctness, it condemns him to dwell inside the modern equivalent of a bad Shakespeare play.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
At best, it's a light, boisterous little confection, but hasn't Hugh Grant already starred in this film a few times?
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A light film, airy, likable and set in Venice.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
When the credits were over at last, I sighed, and took away a moviegoer's fantasy of Ledger and Miller starting work again, far away from Venice and ball gowns, on something that might be worth seeing.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Miller gives the film's one genuine, focused, committed performance, and you can see why she might even reform a rake of Casanova's standing.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Casanova doesn't seduce so much as lull the audience into a stupor with tedious blather about the battle of the sexes, intermittent but pointless swordplay and clumsy slapstick.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Jeremy Irons slithers on board with a haughty sneer and papal vestments, playing Bishop Pucci.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The story, as so often in bad farce, treats them all as idiots, so it's almost impossible be engaged by anything other than the pretty rooms, gondolas and costumes.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Ledger's comic flair is a big plus in a film that is fanatically busy and fatally sexless.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
This Jeffrey Hatcher-Kimberly Simi version, directed by Lasse Hallström, has a resemblance to some of Casanova's memoirs but is chiefly based on the assumption that, in a costume drama, anything goes.
Read Full Review >Empire Dan Jolin
Occasionally fun, always pretty, completely a mess, Casanova never quite finds its footing.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The movie treats trysting as comedy and yet is stingy with the laughs.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jessica Winter
Ledger's deadpan baritone pumps wit into his tepid one-liners like collagen into a wilted starlet's kisser, and the clumsy staging might not grate so much if the tone weren't so self-congratulatory.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.0 (out of 10) based on 40 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Hitchhiker C. gave it a1:
Add asinine silliness (of Hilary Duff proportions) to Hallstrom's usual life-is-beautiful banality, and you should have a pretty good picture of how this trashy excuse for a movie goes!
Jane D. gave it a9:
This is an awful, stupid movie. That said, I saw it twice in the theater just for the Oliver Platt/Lena Olin subplot. They are insanely adorable.
David Z. gave it a7:
Very enjoyable. Don't expect wonders and watch a likable tale.
Ken G. gave it a3:
A mess. The filmmakers were clueless as to how to handle the subject matter, which had no business coming off as slow, dull, and plodding as it does. Fimmakers might have intended to have fun with this premise, but they had no idea how to do it. The love story between Ledger and Miller is so clumsily handled, that it just doesn't work.
Gary B. gave it a9:
A Venetian caprice in which Guardi and Caneletto are brought to life in an operatic buffo plot of delightful visual and dramatic allure. One of the delights of the year.
Carol Y. gave it a7:
Entertaining frothy romp. Good acting by even minor characters.
Mark B. gave it a6:
It's ironic that this sporadically lively, frothy period romp about the famous Italian lover is a near-miss for two different but interlocking reasons. Very simply, the title performance absolutely does not work: even giving much allowance for the plot requirement that Casanova has to constantly elude various legal, clerical and other establishment figures without being recognized, Heath Ledger's stiff, humorless performance is absolutely not what the role calls for. In fact, from a technical standpoint his work here is not all that far removed from his stunning work as a taciturn, inarticulate cowpoke attempting to deal with forbidden desires he didn't know he was capable of having in the current Brokeback Mountain, but while that breakthrough performance was Brokeback's emotional anchor, in Casanova's instance it weighs this movie down in far less satisfying ways. That's a real shame, bacause much of what's going on above, below and around Ledger is a real treat; director Lasse Hallstrom (My Life As A Dog) has spent the last several years of his life doing so much well-acted but overrated Oscar bait for the Weinstein brothers as The Cider House Rules, Chocolat and The Shipping News that it's really an enjoyable surprise to see him working with a lighter touch than we've seen since ABBA: The Movie! Jeremy Irons, playing an officious, self-righteous priest on Cas's trail is tremendously enjoyable, playing him as a cross between Snidely Whiplash and Jeffrey Jones' hapless high school vice-principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Sienna Miller, as our hero's fiery intellectual as well as romantic/erotic match, is so vibrant and joyously sexual that I found myself asking more than once if Jude Law's got a screw loose or what; Lena Olin matches Miller's appeal and adds an irresistable blend of slyness and subtle vulnerability. And then there's Oliver Platt, who for the second time in as many moviegoing months steals the whole picture. In The Ice Harvest he actually made chronic alcoholism rather endearing, and here he makes overeating absolutely lovable; if you've made certain dietary New Year's resolutions, beware...because watching an Oliver Platt movie will probably be more detrimental to your faithfulness than attending a Super Bowl party!
