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65
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Libertine, The
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 33 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Stephen Jeffreys (also play)
Directed by: Laurence Dunmore
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 23, 2005
DVD: July 4, 2006
Running Time: 130 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton, John Malkovich, Paul Ritter, Stanley Townsend, Francesca Annis, Rosamund Pike, and Johnny Vegas
The Libertine follows the adventures of John Wilmot (Depp), the second Earl of Rochester. Known for his scandalous ways, he lives life in pursuit of vice with little recourse. (The Weinstein Company)
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...
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
This one-of-a-kind spellbinder from first-time director Laurence Dunmore is not afraid to shock. Depp is a raunchy wonder, especially in a time-capsule-worthy opening monologue.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
As the imperious actress (and whore) Elizabeth Barry, the unlikely object of Wilmot's affection, Samantha Morton finds the soul in a woman who's hard as nails, and Tom Hollander and Rosamund Pike also provide excellent support. The haunting score is by Michael Nyman.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
This film isn't pretty, but it has some kick: It is to "Shakespeare in Love" what wild pheasant is to Chicken McNuggets.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Depp accepts the character and all of its baggage, and works without a net.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden
Johnny Depp makes a riveting antihero in a dark and bawdy period drama.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Melissa Levine
An interesting film, and a good one, with a harrowing performance by Depp, whose apparent enjoyment of the role seems only to increase as his character deteriorates.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
As the depraved John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, Johnny Depp adds yet another sly sleazoid to his burgeoning portrait gallery.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Johnny Depp's coruscating, rigorously uningratiating performance as debauched, self-destructive 17th-century aristocrat John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, is the glue that doesn't quite hold together first-time director Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of Stephen Jeffreys' 1994 play.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Illuminated by dim candles and the rare glimmer of sun, the movie is grainy, closed-in, and likely to cause spasms of claustrophobia.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It's a bit too muddy, dismal-looking and smoky to beguile us, too fixated on filth and too dreary-looking to really shock us.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
Unfortunately, the dialogue undermines the movie's promise.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
A movie that serves up what its debauched subject would never have countenanced -- sanitized smut with a moral attached.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Do we like John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester? As played by Depp, this 17th-century nobleman-cum-travesty is a carriage crash of epic proportions, and so it's difficult not to crane your neck around to get a better view of the proceedings.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
The rhythms of the dialogue move to the same beat as steadily as a metronome ticks and tocks, while every sentence is polished like stone, absent the jaggedness of real breath and life. You can hear the play in this thing without even knowing it was based on a theatrical production.
Read Full Review >Variety Leslie Felperin
Starting out seductive but ending up tiresome, debuting director Laurence Dunmore's pic is an honorable misfire.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Deep and Morton are really flying here (the scene in which the hero instructs the heroine in the passionate possibilities of her art), and they leave the rest of the film looking heavy on its feet. The second half, especially, grows dour and maundering, and by the end the movie seems to flail in desperation, more like a work in progress than like a finished piece.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
The Libertine's trouble lies precisely in its efforts at conjuring the historical past: No one in the film seems much more convinced than I am that because playwrights and authors wrote in clever, high post-Elizabethan diction, then everyone spoke that way every day, in the pubs, with whores.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
But by the end, you're only watching to see how far Wilmot's pustules will spread, or whether his various diseases will really make his nose fall off.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
What comes from the mouth of Johnny Depp...not the crucial spark of wit or insight that could encourage us to spend two hours with this cruel bore.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Not since Philip Kaufman's 2000 "Quills," the story of the Marquis de Sade, have we had so debauched a literary and movie hero, and Johnny Depp plays him with the relish of an actor who has made odd-ball characters his specialty.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
If your idea of a good time is watching a disjointed period piece featuring a scrawny dog defecating, dozens of dissipated people fornicating and a syphilitic Johnny Depp with oozing pustules on his face, The Libertine may be just the movie for you.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Dunmore creates a memorably grimy London, but the moral grime covering the film proves less memorable.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
It doesn't help matters that The Libertine seems to unload every olde English cliche on file.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
A trying experience. As we watch Rochester fall apart in spectacular fashion, it's clear that a major lure for the venturesome Depp was the chance to play a grotesque, to become a pestilent physical wreck with an artificial silver nose. There's more in that role for the actor, however, than there is for us.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Despite its title, the movie could hardly be less erotic. Indeed, promiscuity has never looked more totally unappealing, and its final scenes of Wilmot's advanced venereal disease are enough to make you take a vow of celibacy. A great date movie, this is not.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Peter Debruge
What is most beguiling about The Libertine is that it allows Wilmot to self-destruct without ever giving us cause to care or relate.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Neva Chonin
There is little debauchery to be had in Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of The Libertine. In fact, hedonism has never looked so bleak.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
The picture is an enormous disappointment... The result is one of the most self-consciously grimy movies on record - it looks as if the negative were developed in a mud bath.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The Libertine is such a torturous mess that it winds up doing something I hadn't thought possible: It renders Johnny Depp charmless.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 33 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Viv W gave it a0:
This is where you need a minus section, just a long drawn out ramblings out of all context,vwaste of money.
Chet R. gave it an8:
Fascinating for the first hour, especially the direct confrontation of the audience by the Earl, but then it gets confused and drops into incoherence. But the excellence of its premise, its quest of what life and love and art is, the uniformly interesting performances and mis-en-scene, makes me wish they could have pulled it off.
Ryan C. gave it a0:
If I could vote -50 I would...this movie is that bad!
[Anonymous] gave it a9:
The painful choices of two women, wife and mistress, were as sensitively portrayed as was Johnny Depp’s once gain brilliant lead in the Libertine. Given the number and nature of negative reviews, I conclude that many people simply do NOT want to have this level of truth shoved in their faces. Many, though certainly not all, substance addicts are similar to the Johnny Depp portrayal of the Libertine in being hyper sensitive to life’s uglier truths and the extent of society’s denial of them. Denial is much more comfortable. The bully speak ‘power of positive thinking’ philosophy, which is based on denial of individual and societal “doo-doo”, is rampant in North America. The ‘powers-that-be’ are presenting themselves as superior when, in fact, the society in which they are positional leaders is deeply sick given both the true percentages of substance addicted individuals AND the rulers’ own ‘pomp and circumstance’ behaviours. Now, that’s scary!
Sarah B. gave it a3:
Good actors, really foul script. Even this Depp lover couldn't stay awake for the entirety of this snorefest.
Maya B. gave it a10:
What a great surprise. I expected a big production movie full of moral lessons and naked wenches, but what I saw was a tale about the darkness of the human soul, and the impulse of self destruction in the face of hypocrisy and boredom.
Timothy P. gave it a2:
Absolutely the most boring worthless movie I've seen in a long time!
