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100It's a superb film -- funny, insightful and very wise about the realities of political life.
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100Perhaps Nichols and May's greatest accomplishment is capturing perfectly on film the mysterious, complex, compromised relationship the public has with today's political leaders.
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90It's as wise and funny and revealing as anything ever created by Mike Nichols and Elaine May.
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90Such a smart and savvy piece of work it encourages us to feel we're eavesdropping on history.
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90I expected to laugh; I didn't expect to be moved.
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90Guilty, deftly orchestrated fun.
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88Sophisticated and unsentimental political film.
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80One the truest-feeling political portraits in years, as well as a fine piece of drama.
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80A hilariously entertaining movie.
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80Nichols and his once and current partner, screenwriter Elaine May, can make a funny, knowing, ultimately judicious film from the deliciously satyric satire.
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80Its palette isn't primary at all: It's full of secondary shadings.
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80Whatever else it may or may not be, Primary Colors is first and last a mainstream Hollywood entertainment. And that means that viewers looking for engagement with political issues are bound to be disappointed.
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75It's a winner with flaws.
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75Striking an excellent balance between wry cultural critique and crisp entertainment value, the picture is as smart and funny as any comedy-drama in recent memory.
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75One of those thrilling confluences in pop culture that rewards audiences for thinking the worst about politicians and the best about movie stars.
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70An intelligent and very funny satire about the bloody game of American politics.
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70At once entertaining and depressing -- it exposes politics raw.
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This entertaining but rather peculiar movie asks extraordinary questions, and I wish it were better equipped to give the answers.
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70Primary Colors is by turns hugely entertaining and resoundingly square, beginning as a raucous black comedy about political mechanics and ending as a sober-sided morality tale.
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70As with Bill Clinton himself, Primary Colors forces one to take the disappointing with the good, the letdown with the promise, the compromises with the hope.
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70It's a movie struggling with its own identity crisis, and with the obvious constraints created by its subject matter.
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70A modern immorality tale with a keen, observant edge.
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70The result is glib, often funny, sometimes bumpy, and ultimately depressing.
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63Joe Klein's novel -- is a cynical satire of life on the campaign trail. It's harsh, blistering, and possesses an edge that the film, a warmhearted comedy/drama, lacks.
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60A slack, tepid picture stuck in a no man's land between satire and drama.
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Primary Colors lacks the buzz and crackle of observed experience; you never feel like you've been plunged into the workings of a real campaign. It's a sham movie about a sham world.
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50An intelligent movie that portrays the mighty without reverence.
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50It never really rollicks like a good political satire.
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Underscores everything that was utterly wrong-headed about the original material.
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10I found it so oppressively smug that I had to get up and pace the aisles three or four times, and I'd have bolted if I hadn't been duty bound to stick it out.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 0 out of 3
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TonyB.9