Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
66
Bandslam
45
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
29
Collector, The
23
Couples Retreat
80
District 9
61
Extract
39
Fame
xx
Fantastic Mr. Fox
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
60
Funny People
32
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
27
Gamer
41
G-Force
39
Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, The
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
55
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Love Happens
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
51
My Sister's Keeper
42
Orphan
28
Pandorum
63
Perfect Getaway, A
86
Ponyo![]()
35
Post Grad
48
Proposal, The
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
24
Sorority Row
83
Star Trek![]()
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
55
Taking Woodstock
47
Time Traveler's Wife
96
Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D![]()
35
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
28
Ugly Truth, The
88
Up![]()
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum![]()
56
Adam
72
Adela
39
Adventures of Power
78
Afghan Star
61
After the Storm
66
Afterschool
xx
All the Best
58
American Casino
72
Amreeka
48
Antichrist
73
Araya
62
Art & Copy
55
As Seen Through These Eyes
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The![]()
13
Beautiful Life, A
70
Beeswax
35
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71
Big Fan
66
Black Dynamite
51
Blind Date
xx
Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76
Bliss
35
Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57
Boys Are Back, The
45
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star![]()
70
Bronson
45
Burning Plain, The
xx
Carriers
55
Casi Divas
57
Chelsea on the Rocks
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
59
Collapse
44
Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82
Cove, The![]()
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The![]()
67
Departures
xx
Dil Bole Hadippa
71
Disgrace
xx
Do Knot Disturb
70
Earth Days
24
Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85
Education, An![]()
55
Endgame
xx
Eulogy for a Vampire
xx
Everyone Else
xx
Fatal Promises
56
Fifty Dead Men Walking
62
Five Minutes of Heaven
74
Flame & Citron
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
28
Free Style
xx
From Mexico with Love
50
Fuel
25
Gentlemen Broncos
50
Give Me Your Hand
58
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo![]()
52
Grace
66
Harmony and Me
81
Headless Woman, The![]()
xx
Heretics, The
63
Horse Boy, The
73
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
74
Humpday
94
Hurt Locker, The![]()
29
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16
If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75
In Search of Beethoven
83
In the Loop![]()
61
Intimate Enemies
42
Irene in Time
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
19
Labor Day
xx
Laila's Birthday
41
Little Ashes
41
Little Traitor, The
66
Liverpool
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
83
Maid, The![]()
xx
Ministers, The
59
More Than a Game
67
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
xx
Mystery Team
48
New York, I Love You
73
Night and Day
66
No Impact Man
47
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34
Other Man, The
xx
Painter Sam Francis, The
54
Paper Heart
xx
Paradise
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
44
Peter and Vandy
35
Play the Game
77
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx
Pretty Ugly People
65
Providence Effect, The
76
Rembrandt's J'accuse
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
40
Shrink
61
Skin
77
Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx
Skiptracers
46
Splinterheads
39
St. Trinian's
89
Still Walking![]()
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
55
Storm
65
Tetro
70
That Evening Sun
72
Thirst
xx
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61
Trucker
xx
Turning Green
83
U2 3D![]()
66
Unmade Beds
66
Unmistaken Child
70
Visual Acoustics
55
Walt & El Grupo
67
Way We Get By, The
69
We Live in Public
64
Wedding Song, The
64
Where is Where?
xx
White on Rice
74
Woman in Berlin, A
69
World's Greatest Dad
70
Yes Men Fix the World
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx
You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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
Rate this movie >
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!
