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Venus
Miramax Films

Venus reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 82 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.4 out of 10
based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 23 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for language, some sexual content and brief nudity

Starring Peter O'Toole, Leslie Phillips, Jodie Whittaker, Vanessa Redgrave, and Richard Griffiths

An aging English actor finds his life changed by the arrival of a friend's precocious grandniece.


GENRE(S): Comedy  |  Drama  |  Foreign  
WRITTEN BY: Hanif Kureishi  
DIRECTED BY: Roger Michell  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: May 22, 2007 
Theatrical: December 21, 2006 
RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: UK 

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...

100
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Told with wit, genuine poignancy and all kinds of humor, Venus charts the unlikely relationship between a man in his 70s and a young woman more than half a century his junior.
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100
New York Post Kyle Smith
A sublime meditation that is one of this year's wisest, warmest and funniest films.
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100
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Venus is a magnificent tribute to actors by filmmakers who know they are the essential human material of theater and the screen.
Read Full Review
91
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
A man can be a treasure just as a work of art can be, and O'Toole is one of the handful of living film actors worthy of a museum of his own. Venus would make a brilliant final exhibit.
Read Full Review
90
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Venus may be a leering male fantasy, but it is also, improbably but persuasively, a love story as tender as it is transgressive. It's a wry celebration of the tyranny of beauty, and the tragicomic way in which desire outruns the betrayals of dying flesh.
Read Full Review
90
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Venus belongs to O'Toole. This is, hands down, my favorite performance of the year, largely because I love the way O'Toole (and the filmmakers) refuse to yield to the all-too-pervasive idea that it's "icky" for old people to even think about sex.
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90
Newsweek David Ansen
A heartbreaking comedy that is simultaneously funny and sad, raunchy and sweet, funky and elegiac. These fresh, unexpected juxtapositions are a specialty of the writer Hanif Kureishi ("My Beautiful Laundrette"), a sworn enemy of cliché.
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89
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
The quiet respect Venus displays toward lions in winter, defanged though they may be, is rare enough; the film's respect for unfinessed lionesses-to-be is rarer still. Wherever they're going, no one here is going quietly.
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88
Boston Globe Ty Burr
Venus is rollickingly funny at times -- but there's an undercurrent of extraordinarily clear-eyed sadness.
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88
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The great thing about Venus - apart from its sharp eye for the daily routines and drab details of senior citizenry in a buzzing metropolis - is that it isn't soppy, or sentimental.
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88
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Peter O'Toole, looking frail beyond his 74 years, gives what may be his farewell performance as a leading movie actor in Roger Michell's Venus. It's one for the books - and maybe the Oscars, too.
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88
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Peter O'Toole, still a British cinematic lion at 74, performs another movie miracle in the Roger Michell-Hanif Kureishi film Venus.
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83
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The screenplay is by Hanif Kureishi, who wrote "The Mother" for Michell and also scripted the classic "My Beautiful Laundrette." He has a feeling for outsiders.
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83
The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
O'Toole is frail and probably won't make many more movies. So Venus is pitched partly as a fond farewell to a beloved artist, and his whole beautiful generation.
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83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Venus is the second film from director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi to explore the sexual lives of folk that the movies treat as sexless -- the elderly. But where "The Mother" was a cold film of sexual greed and emotional pettiness, this robust yet delicate comic drama finds a kind of dignity in the old lothario whose vital life force struggles against a failing body.
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80
Empire Alan Morrison
A screen-acting showcase by a man whose best days, many thought, were behind him. There's life in the old dog yet.
Read Full Review
80
Film Threat Rick Kisonak
The amazing thing about Venus is that it's brutally honest about all this but at the same time funny as hell.
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80
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Awash in terrific performances.
80
The New York Times A.O. Scott
Since the movie is about desire -- not so much for sex as for the vitality and surprise that sex can provide -- it is also about power. Few writers can match Mr. Kureishi's knowing wit on this subject, or his skill at dissecting the shifting dynamics of longing and domination.
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80
Village Voice Jim Ridley
Maurice, the protagonist of Venus, is a suit lovingly tailored to O'Toole's ravaged but commanding frame.
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80
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi take a deeper, edifying interest in the moral ambiguities that arise between Maurice and Jessie. And thanks to our warm investment in both characters, we're more than willing to sign up for this existential ride. We allow this relationship -- and the movie -- to take us places we'd never usually go.
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80
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This comedy drama is an exercise in self-indulgence for O'Toole, but an enjoyable and touching one.
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75
San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
The suggestion that Peter O'Toole is playing some version of his real self in Venus adds a bittersweet poignancy to this quietly affecting British drama.
Read Full Review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Like similar English comedies, it also teeters on the mawkish.
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75
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Though O'Toole, whose ruined beauty Michell emphasizes in frequent and tight close-ups, and newcomer Whittaker have a striking rapport, the film's most haunting moments pair him with Vanessa Redgrave -- amazingly, this is their first movie together -- as his ex-wife. They evoke a lifetime of love, betrayal, regret and forgiveness in the space of a few lines, then move on without missing a beat.
Read Full Review
75
ReelViews James Berardinelli
This is a brave movie because it addresses a subject Hollywood feels uncomfortable about.
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75
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
O'Toole gives a staggering performance -- fearless, defiantly untamed and in its own way a work of art.
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75
USA Today Claudia Puig
Peter O'Toole's tour-de-force performance makes Venus a movie not to be missed.
Read Full Review
70
The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Melancholy but enjoyable.
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70
Variety Todd McCarthy
Genuinely funny, randy and moving by turns, breezily enjoyable throughout.
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70
New York Magazine David Edelstein
Venus is worth seeing for the scenes between O’Toole and Vanessa Redgrave as the woman he abandoned--the mother of his children.
Read Full Review
67
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Venus has a swank pedigree, but in this case that doesn't mean it's much more than a quaint machine to elicit tears and awards.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Kent B. gave it a2:
This movie did not deliver as expected. A fair story not reflected on screen. O'Toole overacted and the other actors seemed great. A real waste of time and money mine and theirs.

Linda L. gave it a9:
I was braced for something sad and a little icky. Yes and yes, but "Venus" also is wise and touching and funny. It really makes you think about what's important in life. Also I want to mention the soundtrack -- the music of Corinne Bailey Rae is wonderfully enjoyable.

Chad S. gave it an8:
In a church, Maurice(Peter O'Toole) dances with his oldest and dearest friend, Ian(Leslie Phillips), the one person he's most loyal to. Maurice's adoration for this person isn't a performance like the one he gives for his Valerie(Vanessa Redgrave), his ex-wife. Ever the ham, but so utterly compelling and convincing(his words don't seem processed), he tells Valerie that she's his one true love. But it's all method. His tender emotions bubble up from a wellspring reserved for Jessie(Jodie Whitaker). Even though Valerie is lying, she eats it up. Maurice doesn't truly respect women, but the filmmaker does. In a later scene, she encounters Jodie, and says, "Oh, you must be the one..." Art is a lie. Everything that Maurice said to her was a lie but she's touched nonetheless, and so are we, even though this man is clearly a pig.

Rani C. gave it a9:
It was good. I expected to be disgusted a little and I was. I did not expect to laugh but I did. The movie made me focus on the 90 minutes at hand. I enjoyed the cinematography. I am certainly glad that O'Toole was nominated for his acting. It was a breath of fresh air when compared to the same old recycled stuff that overflows in the theaters year after year.

Suzanne A. gave it a10:
Deeply touching, beautifully written, magnificently acted.

Billy S. gave it a10:
In My Favorite Year, Peter O'Toole as Alan Swann declared - "I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!" In Venus, Peter O'Toole, the movie star of the last 45 years, confirms his place as the greatest living actor in the world today. Venus is Alan Swann's story 25 years later, and if Richard Burton and Peter Finch were alive today, it would be their story. Richard Griffiths, Leslie Philips and Vanessa Redgrave are along to add to the grace and dignity that Mr. O'Toole has always personified in every one of his roles and Jodie Whittaker makes a stunning debut as the young girl who captures Maurice's heart and youth. It is simply, a perfect movie with a perfect Peter O'Toole, but then, has there ever been anything but a perfect Peter O'Toole performance? Are you reading this Academy members? God Bless You Peter O'Toole!

Doug N. gave it a7:
Well acted and makes one think. Probably not for everyone. I think most older people would enjoy it.

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