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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
DreamWorks SKG

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer reviews


7.0

based on 30 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 42 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for aberrant behavior involving nudity, violence, sexuality, and disturbing images

Starring Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood, and John Hurt

Based on Patrick Suskind's best-selling novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is set in Paris and revolves around an eccentric 18th century murderer with an extraordinary sense of smell.

GENRE(S):	Crime \| Drama \| Foreign \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Andrew Birkin Bernd Eichinger Tom Tykwer Patrick Süskind (novel Das Parfum)
DIRECTED BY:	Tom Tykwer
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: July 24, 2007 Theatrical: December 29, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	147 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Germany / France / Spain

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...

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is a dark, dark, dark film, focused on an obsession so complete and lonely it shuts out all other human experience. You may not savor it, but you will not stop watching it, in horror and fascination.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Most horror movies try to show us the man inside the monster, so we'll empathize with his moral dilemmas or feel his suffering. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer shows us a man who is all monster, whose colossal amorality makes him a potential Messiah or menace to humanity.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Whishaw's oddly charismatic performance makes the despicable Grenouille into an almost sympathetic antihero. The rather astonishing finale will likely have audiences either howling in derision or ardently dissecting afterward. And it must have given the bluenoses at the MPAA fits.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film is downright repulsive in places, and otherwise pushes the envelope for an art film, but it's a dazzling piece of filmmaking that wins us over with its boldness and artistry.

Empire Dan Jolin

The odd conclusion renders it somewhat oblique, but Perfume is a feast for the senses.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Tykwer makes of all this murder and madness a concoction of improbable beauty and rare artistry. "Perfume" is not just the finest film of his career but easily one of the past year's most accomplished.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It is to director Tykwer's credit that, although you never come close to understanding Jean-Baptiste, you don't turn your nose up at him, either.

Premiere Ethan Alter

Perfume is sure to annoy as many moviegoers as it entertains, but at least even the naysayers would find it difficult to argue that film is nothing if not a departure from the ordinary.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

This is a crazy, gorgeous, disturbing, darkly comic horror story about an early-18th-century Frenchman born in a Paris fish market without any odor of his own but with a sense of smell that would make a pack of bloodhounds wail with envy.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, crosses over from thriller into magic realism for a lavishly staged climax that's a bit much.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Perfume misses some of the subtler base notes of Süskind's creepier, more self-aware original, but Whishaw and Tykwer blend the movie into something quite heady in its own bottle.

The Hollywood Reporter Bernard Besserglik

Long regarded as unfilmable, Patrick Suskind's 1985 novel "Perfume" has finally reached the screen in a blockbuster production that succeeds reasonably well in achieving what many said was beyond the scope of cinema: conveying the world of scent and smell.

Variety Derek Elley

The seductive, sensory prose of Patrick Suskind's bestseller, "Perfume," reaches the screen with loads of visual panache but only intermittent magic.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

A memorable and outrageous movie, but one more likely to be remembered as a massive folly than a whopping success.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Deeply flawed though it may be, Perfume is a challenging motion picture, and one whose impressions are not easily shaken.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The film, though admirably ambitious, is resolutely earthbound, mired in ick and slime and never more wooden than in the delirious climax.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Perfume is a pitch-black period epic of squalor and enterprise.

Village Voice Ed Halter

It's a noble experiment in pushing the limits of cinema, but Tykwer never achieves true profundity.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Perfume is ultimately an unmistakable failure, but there's a strange majesty to its epic overreaching. It can be faulted for many things, but not for lacking the courage of its convictions.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Weaves a sensual spell of extraordinary delicacy, then sustains it -- up to a point.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and cowriters Andrew Birkin and Bernd Eichinger preserve some of the novel's storytelling flair, and Dustin Hoffman does a swell turn as the antihero's Italian mentor. But despite a fairly spectacular climax, the material's generic limitations eventually catch up with the plot.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

By the time Perfume arrives at its ridiculous mass orgy, staged at the gallows where Grenouille is supposed to meet his end, you really would rather see him meet his end than endure a ridiculous mass orgy.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's simultaneously arty, arcane and nasty.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter

While Tom Tykwer's lavish and lively screen adaptation of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is certainly not a stinker, there is something decidedly off about it.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

There are sniff movies and there are snuff movies, but Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is both. It has the bouquet of balm and blood. Imagine "Fragrance of the Lambs."

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Tykwer's camera can assault the audience with the rankest of imagery, but not even once does it come close to distilling the actual aroma of the abattoir that was 18th-century France. And for that, I suppose, we should all be thankful.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

What's missing is less a sense of the protagonist's inner nose (which is very well-trammeled) as a sense of his inner life, motivation or desire.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Try as it might to be refined and provocative, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer never rises above the pedestrian creepiness of its conceit.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

This isn't pleasant to watch. Neither is it amusing, intellectually engaging, whimsically fascinating, coldly satirical or painfully poignant, though at any given moment in this erratic film director Tom Tykwer might be trying for one of these conflicting tones.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Perfume offers eau de crud.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 42 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

John E. gave it an8:
First I'd like to say that Nanifaye P. is an idiot and only an idiot would rationalize this movie by comparing it to Iraq and insulting the hard work and sacrifices of our soldiers and our country. It's unfortunate that my review will likely be edited before posting (if posted at all) since it's not PC at the moment to insult other reviewers, but sadly on the other hand, it is quite fashionable to trash anything and everyone that has anything to do with Iraq without a shred of logic to one's insane accusations. On a separate note, the movie was great with a very original storyline coupled with excellent acting and directing. Oh and to answer your question Nanifaye P., what's horrific is that you seem to believe every last bit of nonsense you hear and have the gusto to regurgitate it in something as apolitical as a movie review about perfume. Quite frankly, I'm not quite sure who's sicker, the main character of the movie, or you.

Pat A. gave it a3:
It is clear that the director of this movie had a fair-sized budget to work with. It is too bad that it is one of the dumbest stories I have ever wasted two hours on. Save your money; do not rent this movie!

Nancy H. gave it a9:
Truly disturbing in a dark way--like road kill, can't take your eyes off the movie. Beautifully shot, and the story has you screaming in parts. What is most frightening is that the main character is devoid of any feeling--he looks at humans as experiments to feed his obsession. It's one of those movies that has you thinking about it for a few days.

Michael D. gave it a2:
I have nothing positive to say about this movie. The acting is terrible, the plot is nonsensical, and the subject matter is creepy.

NaniFaye P. gave it an8:
First really original plot I have seen in a long time. The trailers made it look like a horror/thriller movie, but I thought it was neither. It was a beautiful portrait of a lost human. He was trying to bottle love, because he had none in himself. Sometimes hated like a devil, sometimes worshiped as a god, but empty inside. It was not offensive to my eyes or my tastes, because the murders were done in such a way that the imagery was beautiful, not horrific. There was nothing frightening or scary about his actions, because they were done for what he saw as a higher cause. I mean, come on, we kill innocent people in Iraq so we can have their oil - tell me if that's not horrific.

Alfonso D gave it an8:
Ben Whishaw plays the main character Jean-Baptiste with such amazing realism that I was truly captivated with his story. The story was an amusing one from start to finish. It did fail to provide me the ending I felt it deserved. I did feel good enough about it to recommend it to my friends. I do feel that Ben Whishaw could one day be nominated for an Oscar if he keeps aligning himself in the right rolls.

Karima A. gave it a10:
Fascinating movie both on the dramatic and technical levels.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer DreamWorks SKG

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
DreamWorks SKG