|

Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

20
American Carol, An
xx
Australia
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
45
Blindness
57
Body of Lies
67
Bolt
63
Burn After Reading
58
City of Ember
15
College
82
Dark Knight, The
43
Death Race
15
Disaster Movie
43
Eagle Eye
58
Express, The
49
Family That Preys, The
57
Flash of Genius
36
Fly Me to the Moon
54
Get Smart
72
Ghost Town
28
Haunting of Molly Hartley. The
57
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
55
House Bunny, The
35
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
73
Kung Fu Panda
46
Lakeview Terrace
52
Longshots, The
53
Lucky Ones, The
61
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
51
Mamma Mia!
31
Max Payne
43
Meet Dave
37
Miracle at St. Anna
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
39
Nights in Rodanthe
45
Pride and Glory
58
Quantum of Solace
53
Quarantine
36
Righteous Kill
53
Rocker, The
59
Role Models
19
Saw V
57
Secret Life of Bees, The
49
Sex Drive
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
49
Soul Men
36
Space Chimps
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
47
Swing Vote
60
Traitor
71
Tropic Thunder
56
Twilight
70
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
56
W.
93
WALL-E
27
Women, The
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
56
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
93
WALL-E
82
Dark Knight, The
73
Kung Fu Panda
72
Ghost Town
71
Tropic Thunder
70
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
67
Bolt
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
63
Burn After Reading
61
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
60
Traitor
59
Role Models
58
Express, The
58
Quantum of Solace
58
City of Ember
57
Secret Life of Bees, The
57
Body of Lies
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
57
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
57
Flash of Genius
56
Twilight
56
W.
56
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
55
House Bunny, The
54
Get Smart
53
Quarantine
53
Rocker, The
53
Lucky Ones, The
52
Longshots, The
51
Mamma Mia!
49
Sex Drive
49
Family That Preys, The
49
Soul Men
47
Swing Vote
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
46
Lakeview Terrace
45
Blindness
45
Pride and Glory
43
Eagle Eye
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
35
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
31
Max Payne
28
Haunting of Molly Hartley. The
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
19
Saw V
15
Disaster Movie
15
College
xx
Australia
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

xx
All of Us
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
64
Appaloosa
69
Ashes of Time Redux
68
August Evening
xx
B.O.H.I.C.A.
62
Baghead
84
Ballast
54
Battle in Seattle
xx
Beer for My Horses
75
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
xx
Billy: The Early Years
66
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56
Bottle Shock
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50
Breakfast with Scot
61
Brick Lane
43
Call and Response
62
Changeling
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
Choke
46
Choose Connor
84
Christmas Tale, A
41
Cthulhu
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
xx
Dostana
62
Duchess, The
46
Dukes, The
63
Eden
xx
Eden Lake
66
Elegy
46
Elephant King, The
80
Encounters at the End of the World
26
Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64
Fall, The
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
26
Filth and Wisdom
28
Fireproof
52
First Basket, The
67
Flow: For Love of Water
37
Forever Strong
69
Frontrunners
82
Frozen River
43
Gardens of the Night
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
54
Good Dick
30
Guitar, The
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
44
Henry Poole is Here
31
Hounddog
27
House of the Sleeping Beauties
47
How About You
54
Humboldt County
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
40
Igor
64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
78
I've Loved You So Long
63
JCVD
41
Johnny Got His Gun
xx
Just Buried
62
Kabluey
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
25
Lake City
78
Last Mistress, The
81
Let the Right One In
xx
Lower Learning
63
Man Named Pearl, A
89
Man on Wire
xx
Mary
xx
Matador, The
62
Mister Foe
84
Momma's Man
51
Morning Light
79
Moving Midway
33
My Name Is Bruce
59
Nights and Weekends
73
Obscene
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
40
Passengers
xx
Phoebe in Wonderland
55
Ping Pong Playa
75
Pool, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82
Rachel Getting Married
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
xx
Roadside Romeo
53
RocknRolla
56
Save Me
74
Secret, A
45
Shoot on Sight
57
Sixty Six
85
Slumdog Millionaire
56
Special
58
Splinter
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
64
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
57
Towelhead
72
Transsiberian
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
61
Universe of Keith Haring
84
Up the Yangtze
52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
79
Visitor, The
61
Wackness, The
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Up the Yangtze
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Ballast
84
Momma's Man
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Frozen River
82
Rachel Getting Married
81
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
80
Encounters at the End of the World
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
79
Moving Midway
79
Visitor, The
78
I've Loved You So Long
78
Last Mistress, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
75
Pool, The
75
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
74
Secret, A
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Obscene
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
72
Transsiberian
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Frontrunners
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
67
Synecdoche, New York
67
Flow: For Love of Water
66
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
66
Elegy
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
64
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
64
Fall, The
64
Appaloosa
64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Man Named Pearl, A
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
62
Changeling
62
Kabluey
62
Duchess, The
62
Mister Foe
62
Baghead
61
Wackness, The
61
Brick Lane
61
Universe of Keith Haring
59
Nights and Weekends
59
We Are Wizards
58
Splinter
57
Towelhead
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
57
Sixty Six
56
Special
56
Save Me
56
Religulous
56
Bottle Shock
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
55
Ping Pong Playa
54
Humboldt County
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
52
First Basket, The
52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Choose Connor
46
Elephant King, The
46
Dukes, The
45
Shoot on Sight
44
Henry Poole is Here
43
Call and Response
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Johnny Got His Gun
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
40
Passengers
37
Forever Strong
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
33
My Name Is Bruce
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Everybody Wants to Be Italian
26
Filth and Wisdom
25
Lake City
xx
Dostana
xx
Phoebe in Wonderland
xx
All of Us
xx
Matador, The
xx
Billy: The Early Years
xx
Roadside Romeo
xx
B.O.H.I.C.A.
xx
Eden Lake
xx
Just Buried
xx
Beer for My Horses
xx
Mary
xx
Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Vanity Fair
Focus Features
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some sensuality/partial nudity and a brief violent image
Starring
Reese Witherspoon,
James Purefoy,
Romola Garai,
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers,
Gabriel Byrne,
Jim Broadbent,
Bob Hoskins,
and
Rhys Ifans
Mira Nair's film version of the classic novel by William Makepeace Thackery introduces a new audience to the beautiful, funny, passionate and calculating heroine Becky Sharp (Witherspoon). (Focus Features)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
William Makepeace Thackeray (novel)
Matthew Faulk
Julian Fellowes
Mark Skeet
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Mira Nair
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 1, 2005
Video: February 1, 2005
Theatrical: September 1, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
137 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
UK / USA |
Nominated, Golden Lion, 2004 Venice Film Festival

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
The peculiar quality of Vanity Fair, which sets it aside from the Austen adaptations such as "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice," is that it's not about very nice people. That makes them much more interesting.

90
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Witherspoon's simply terrific, and it's amazing how quickly and easily she sheds speculation that she was too modern for the role.

88
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Graced with Nair's loving direction, Witherspoon's radiance and that great cast, it is a treat, if somewhat less so than the novel.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
A triumph for its director and its star.

75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Paula Nechak
Witherspoon is terrific.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Yet something's missing in director Mira Nair's treatment -- specifically, a point of view about the material, a compelling reason for this historical excavation beyond the fact that Reese Witherspoon makes a convincing Becky Sharp.

75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Nair and screenwriters Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet and Julian Fellowes have faithfully carried most of the main characters over from the novel but have changed its point of view.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Despite its flaws, the movie is compulsively watchable, and few will be bored by it. It's a charming movie that falls short of greatness, but is still worth a solid recommendation.

75
Portland Oregonian
Karen Karbo
Nair, against all odds, has injected new life into this oft-filmed tale, handily re-creating the grimy look of early 19th-century London streets.

70
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
Smart, saucy, and ingenious in the extreme. The trouble is that when a subtext is dragged to the fore, however splendidly, the poor old text gets lost.

70
Dallas Observer
Melissa Levine
While the film bubbles with humor, sensual detail and heaps of plot, it never quite becomes more than the sum of its parts. It's well worth seeing, but it isn't transcendent.

70
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
The spirit of that most modern of 19th century heroines, Becky Sharp, remains intact, and Nair's Indian touches make for an intriguing, fresh approach.

70
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
It almost makes you wonder whether Vanity Fair is not the perfect text for a lesson in Buddhist detachment. Certainly, Vanity Fair is a never-ending Western story that benefits from Nair's philosophically Eastern point of view.

67
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
It borders on perky -- a duller, safer tonal choice for the story of a conniving go-getter whose fall is as precipitous as her rise.

63
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
The movie crams in so many of the events and characters of Thackeray's 900-page novel that the story often seems to be moving on fast-forward, pausing here and there to introduce a character, then skipping ahead from London to the country to Brussels and on, eventually, to India.

63
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
Nair makes Vanity Fair an elegant showcase for an unforgettable heroine.

60
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Nair's approach never entirely convinces, and the adaptation of the 900-plus-page book becomes increasingly episodic, making this Vanity Fair more a collection of intermittent pleasures than a satisfying emotional repast.

60
Newsweek
David Ansen
Nair and Witherspoon pull back from the ferocity of Thackeray's portrait: they're afraid we won't find Becky Sharp likable enough. Yes, she's the most brilliant, bold and vibrant creature in this social panorama, but she should also be chilling.

60
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
It's by no means a classic, but the dialogue and high caliber of performances mean you'll get your money's worth, especially if you're really into empire waistlines and that infamous English haughtiness.

60
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
The effect is a bit like watching "Gone With the Wind" with a dumpling substituting for Scarlett OHara.

50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
This might be tolerable if Nair hadn't missed the central point, that Becky Sharp isn't sharp like spice, she's sharp like a razor.

50
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
With more time and a dash more cynicism, the film just might have achieved the thrilling allure of Becky Sharp's perfectly icy heart.

50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
What's missing from this Vanity Fair is the sense of plucky, anything-goes adventurousness that abounds in Thackeray's novel.

50
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
Unfortunately, Nair's film doesn't so much end as fall off a cliff, the ultimate victim of viewers' heightened expectations that this briskly paced story will take them someplace -- other than around the block in a horse-drawn carriage.

50
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
This movie has precious little satirical edge. What is needs is more emphasis on the "vanity" and less on the "fair."

50
Wall Street Journal
Joanne Kaufman
Despite the curry flavoring Ms. Nair has seen fit to add, this is a Vanity Fair without spice.
50
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
In an effort to blend Thackeray and "Sex and the City," Vanity Fair ends up nowhere.

50
Time
Richard Schickel
There's something about her (Nair) Vanity Fair that doesn't quite work. There is no depth beneath its bright surfaces, no potent emotional undercurrents.

50
TV Guide
Ken Fox
It comes as a huge disappointment, then, that having cast Witherspoon as Miss Sharp, director Mira Nair and Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) were unable to resist that impulse to find 21st-century prototypes in 19th-century literary characters, fictional creations whose values lie not in the way they reflect our own narcissistic times, but the way they reveal so much about their own.

50
Village Voice
Leslie Camhi
The pacing feels choppy, and the characters' emotions are sometimes too sudden to be believable. (One exception is Rhys Ifans, affecting as Amelia's long-suffering and neglected suitor.)

50
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Thackeray said that he wanted "to leave everybody dissatisfied and unhappy at the end of the story." Nair may have had other intentions, but by film's end, audiences are bound to be left dissatisfied with the choppy and confusing storytelling style and unhappy about the missed opportunity.

50
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Vanity Fair has a deeper conceptual confusion. In mixing satire and romance, the movie proves once again that the two are about as compatible as lemon juice and heavy cream.

50
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
I dont quite cherish Thackerays novel, but a can-do feminist, multicultural contemporization of it strikes me as, well, unnecessary.

40
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
Either a radical reinterpretation of the source material or a mammoth failure of nerve. Whichever the case, it makes for a tremendously dull film that gives Witherspoon little to do except pose against a pretty backdrop.

40
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The first half is better than average for an opulent Classics Illustrated film, thanks to realistic period detail, brisk storytelling, and Reese Witherspoon as the saucy rags-to-riches Becky Sharp. Then the whole lumbering weight of the production catches up with the filmmakers, slowing the proceedings to an interminable crawl.

40
LA Weekly
Ron Stringer
Turgid, melodramatic travesty of Thackeray's gimlet-eyed satire.

40
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
Witherspoon is flavorless, so she emphasizes the screenplay's skimpiness instead of at least partially redressing it.

40
Empire
Emma Cochrane
A serious misfire.

38
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
She has been made lovable -- and a Vanity Fair with a lovable Becky Sharp has no reason to exist. It's as if Shakespeare had put Hamlet on Prozac: What's the point?

30
Slate
David Edelstein
I wonder if anything could have made this misfire work.

10
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
There may be filmmakers whose own vision is vast enough to take on Thackeray's, but Mira Nair isn't one of them. Her new film of Vanity Fair is a disaster. Scene by scene and moment to moment, it's a woeful misreading of the book.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Read more user comments...
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|