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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Venus
Universal acclaim
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 24 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama | Foreign
Written by: Hanif Kureishi
Directed by: Roger Michell
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 21, 2006
DVD: May 22, 2007
Running Time: 95 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
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.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Changing Lanes Enduring Love Notting Hill The Mother Titanic Town
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...
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.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
A sublime meditation that is one of this year's wisest, warmest and funniest films.
Read Full Review >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 >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 >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 >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Venus is rollickingly funny at times -- but there's an undercurrent of extraordinarily clear-eyed sadness.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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 >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.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Awash in terrific performances.
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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jim Ridley
Maurice, the protagonist of Venus, is a suit lovingly tailored to O'Toole's ravaged but commanding frame.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This comedy drama is an exercise in self-indulgence for O'Toole, but an enjoyable and touching one.
Read Full Review >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 >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Like similar English comedies, it also teeters on the mawkish.
Read Full Review >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 >ReelViews James Berardinelli
This is a brave movie because it addresses a subject Hollywood feels uncomfortable about.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
O'Toole gives a staggering performance -- fearless, defiantly untamed and in its own way a work of art.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Peter O'Toole's tour-de-force performance makes Venus a movie not to be missed.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Genuinely funny, randy and moving by turns, breezily enjoyable throughout.
Read Full Review >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 >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
The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 24 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Tom M. gave it a6:
Peter O'Toole could very well turn out to be the last remaining master actor of an era that produced an extraordinary variety of stage and screen icons--Olivier, Burton, Richard Harris, Laurence Harvey, to name a few. Hopefully, "Venus" will not be his last call, a somewhat charming tale, but not a truly worthy vehicle for one of film's greatest actors of all time. Newcomer Jodie Whittaker is excellent as the young Venus and Vanessa Redgrave, as always, comes through with a superb performance. A bonus is the infectious soundtrack by British soul singer Corrine Bailey Rae, at times sounding like a genuine reincarnation of Lady Day.
J H gave it a10:
I loved this movie. O'Toole is magnificent and the story was beautifully engaging, hilarious, and tragic. Don't miss this one.
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.
