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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Mulholland Drive
Universal acclaim
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 158 votes
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Mystery
Written by: David Lynch
Directed by: David Lynch
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 12, 2001
DVD: April 9, 2002
Running Time: 147 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / France
Summary
RATING: R for violence, language and some strong sexuality
Starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, Mark Pellegrino, Brian Beacock, and Robert Forster
In this complex tale of suspense, set in the unreal universe of Los Angeles, writer/director David Lynch explores the city's schizophrenic nature, an uneasy blend of innocence and corruption, love and loneliness, beauty and depravity. (Universal Focus)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Blue Velvet Inland Empire Lost Highway Lynch The Straight Story Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me Wild at Heart
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site Interpretation by Salon.com
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...
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Lynch's Hollywood is a grand old girl, but she's one with some very treacherous curves. To trace the contours of her sensuality, you need a camera as sensitive as a set of fingertips. Lynch's is.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Like "Memento," Mulholland Drive is an amnesiac noir in the tradition that goes back to "Spellbound" and "Somewhere in the Night."
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
For film buffs and Lynch fans, this is a glorious high.
Read Full Review >Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson
Amid the chaos of this marvelous, uncategorizable film squirms one of the year's best performances.
LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
Not just everything you want in a David Lynch movie, but damn near everything else you want in ANY movie.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Likely as not, these things mean nothing in a conventional plot sense, but as powerful images, as pictures from a dreamlike world, they are unforgettable. And that, David Lynch would probably say, is exactly the point.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Watts and Harring even turn out to be the hottest Hollywood couple of 2001. The plot slides along agreeably as a tantalizing mystery before becoming almost completely inexplicable, though no less thrilling, in the closing stretches--but that's what Lynch is famous for. It looks great too.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This is a movie to surrender yourself to. If you require logic, see something else. Mulholland Drive works directly on the emotions, like music.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
By surrendering any semblance of rationality to create a post-Freudian, pulp-fiction fever dream of a movie, Mr. Lynch ends up shooting the moon with Mulholland Drive.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It's surreal, erotic, creepy, frustrating, absorbing, transporting and torturous in the way only a Lynch film can be.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Thrilling and ludicrous. The movie feels entirely instinctual. The rest is silencio.
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf
While this road may contain too many potholes -- and plotholes -- to sustain an even ride, there are moments of greatness scattered throughout to remind us why Lynch is vital and why the French think he's so nifty.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Viewers will feel as though they've just finished a great meal but aren't sure what they've been served. Behind them, the chef smiles wickedly.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The challenge is exhilarating. You can discover a lot about yourself by getting lost in Mulholland Drive. It grips you like a dream that won't let go.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It just requires an open mind, a love of film and a willingness to dream.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
A dizzying - sometimes frustrating - marvel of moviemaking instinct and ingenuity.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
Mulholland Drive isn't a "puzzle" like "Memento," in which the pieces (sort of) fit together. There are some pieces here that will never fit -- except maybe in Lynch's unconscious. And yet -- and yet -- this distinctly Hollywood nightmare makes a deeper kind of sense.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Lynch's new movie, Mulholland Drive, is a trip and a half: It's like playing Twister and Scrabble simultaneously while high on LSD. Oh, and it's dark out.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
An intriguingly mysterious, self-reflexive ode to the dream factory, it's one of Lynch's most satisfying films.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
It's a lush, lovely dreamscape of a movie, steeped in familiar vernacular (film noir), yet capable of shooting off in totally unfamiliar, surreal directions.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Lynch does "explain" what's happening via a plot twist two-thirds of the way through "Drive," which will satisfy you (as it did me) or leave you asking, "Is that all there is?"
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
Exhilarating not only for its dreamlike images and fierce, frequently reckless imagination but also for the fact that it got made (and released) at all.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
It will frustrate viewers who like stories to make instant sense, but fans of provocative puzzles will have mind-teasing fun.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
No classic like "The Big Sleep," another famously impossible-to-follow Los Angeles thriller. But for those willing to hang on for dear life, Lynch makes it worth their while.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Jay Carr
It's flawed, but it's also rich. And how many films make you feel that you and the filmmaker are following the course of a dream?
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
The movie, at two and a half hours, retains much of the unhurried suspense -- the careful cultivating of our patience, of our narrative loyalty -- that is bred by the best TV.
Film Threat Chris Gore
There’s a lot to enjoy, and plenty of potential, but none of it pays off. So we’re left with what amounts to some very clever experimental cinema in the Lynch vein. Which, if you think about it, isn’t all that bad.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
As riveting as it may be, his film is a total shaggy-dog story.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Watching this surrealist silliness, I would have welcomed the sight of a geezer on a riding mower.
New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Lynch needs to renew himself with an influx of the deep feeling he has for people, for outcasts, and lay off the cretins and hobgoblins and zombies for a while. Mulholland Drive is the product of David Lynch, Inc.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Mulholland Drive is an extended mood opera, if you want to put an arty label on incoherence.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 158 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
nick gave it a1:
Complete waste of time! One of the most confusing 2+ hours of my life, i hated almost every minute of it, except the love scene with naomi watts.
Nia N. gave it a1:
This movie really pumps up my adrenalin sometimes.. but it get more complicated to understand what the story about...I have watched for 2 hours and more but I don't get until the end.. waste my time download it.
Ted K. gave it a1:
Nonsensical, boring garbage. A lot of the critics and users are suffering from emperor's new clothes syndrome and will belittle those of us who know BS when we see it. Zero out of ten if it weren't for the titillating lesbian scenes.
N V gave it a0:
This is the worst movie I've ever seen bar none. There is no plot; the film jumps all over, making absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's like watching what might go on inside your head while you're on an acid trip. Mulholland Drive, you owe me 2.5 hours of my life back!
Kharlos gave it a10:
My brother didn't like this movie, but he is the kind of moviegoer that leaves his brain in the ashtray of his car before going into the theater. His kind of movie is along the lines of Independence Day, Austin Powers, Transformers, etc... Now I enjoy wholesome tearjerkers like "Wild horses can't be broken" and action/dramas like "Flyboys" as well, but "Mulholland Drive" would not fall into a category that would be so easily labeled. As others have stated already, it's more akin to art than anything else. I have trouble simply describing the effect this movie had on me when I watched it, but I really, really liked it. After 2 viewings, I agree with the popular view on the plot: This film is an invasive look into the depths of the human mind, and it's ability to control perceived reality. A large portion of the movie (first 2 hours or so) are a fabrication of Diane's mind...a favorable re-creation of accounts and personas. If you have ever seen "The Matrix" then you will have some idea of the concept of living "as a boat in a bottle" so to speak. When the theater scene arrives, I think it is symbolic of Diane's inability to maintain the mental farce and avoid the inevitable, brutal, punishing truth of actual reality. If your friend said to you "ok, sit down silently in that chair and for the next 10 minutes, do NOT have a thought about cars" would you be able to do it? Maintaining focus on (or away from) things requires energy, and Diane finally ran out of it. After the theater scene, Diane's "matrix" comes crashing down, and she is unable to re-create it, even though she trantically tries again (when Camilla revisits her in the kitchen and at the couch). With Diane's imagination unable to get her back to her nirvana, she sees no other recourse than suicide for her miserable life. In my opinion, Mulholland Drive is one of the 5 greatest movies that I have ever seen. I'm sorry that there are those that will not enjoy it simply because it is not like 99% of the "made for tv" or "made for Hollywood" movies that are out there.
JW. gave it an8:
(8.5) Naomi Watts has been, in the last six years or so, the greatest gift to American film. She was no rookie at the time, obviously, but this was basically her coming-out party. Her performance here is cited by people like David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees) as a casting director's equivalent of love at first sight. Already evident are the strengths that would make her shine brightest in everything from 21 Grams to We Don't Live Here Anymore. You can't NOT watch her. In this film - amid all the surreal emotional touchstones she hits -it is her flinch at the fateful dinner party that says everything about how far into a character she can go. Without her, Mulholland would fly totally off its rocker halfway through. As it is, you keep watching to the last freakish second. It's sure to scare the bejeezus out of you at least once.
Mike gave it a10:
I loved this movie! I walked out of the movie theater and I was amazed in what I seen. The most impressive was in how the movie was directed. Simply amazing! no wonder the director was nominated for an oscar for best director. In my opinion he should of won! After watching it 3 times I still didnt understand it, but after the 4th time everything just clicks in and it make PERFECT sense! The movie is so intresting. you keep on watching it again and again! Can't wait to see what David Lynch makes next!
