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Seven Years in Tibet
Metascore
55 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 18 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 18
  3. Negative: 1 out of 18
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  1. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Lisa Alspector
    80
    This moving story is full of breathtaking compositions, gorgeous spectacle, and inspiring philosophies articulated by sympathetic figures.
  2. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Russell Smith
    78
    Annaud (The Lover, The Name of the Rose, Quest for Fire) may be, with all due respect to Stanley Kubrick, the most talented adapter of literary source material in recent film history. Seven Years confirms his mastery by doling out a perfect ratio of moving interpersonal drama and visual enchantment.
  3. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    75
    The movie is a star vehicle at heart, aimed more at marketing Pitt's popularity than probing complexities of empire-building and cultural clash that trouble the Tibetan region to this day.
  4. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Elvis Mitchell
    70
    Beyond his struggles with an unwieldy accent and the screenplay's hokum, Mr. Pitt gives a sincere if labored performance enhanced by a sense of genuine struggle.
  5. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    67
    French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, who brought his interest in self-discovery and untamed places to Quest for Fire, The Lover, and the IMAX 3-D film Wings of Courage, is at his best re-creating the serene exoticism of the Dalai Lama's Tibet. But the spark of the holy that the Dalai Lama lights in Harrer flickers only fitfully in all the wind in this production.
  6. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    63
    Seven Years in Tibet, however flawed, has feeling and purpose. It bears witness.
  7. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    63
    Seven Years in Tibet is an ambitious and beautiful movie with much to interest the patient viewer, but it makes the common mistake of many films about travelers and explorers: It is more concerned with their adventures than with what they discover.
  8. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    63
    Annaud's desire to create an epic tale actually harms the production, since it results in unnecessary scenes that pad the running length to more than two hours.
  9. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Dwight Garner
    60
    The bad news is that Pitt, despite this film's high-minded intentions (there are Yo-Yo Ma cello solos on the soundtrack, and China expert Orville Schell acted as an advisor during the shoot), or more likely because of them, finds himself trapped in a long, earnest movie that fails to ever feel very alive.
  10. Variety
    Reviewed by: Derek Elley
    60
    Despite some magnificent widescreen lensing, faultless ethnographic detail and a timely sympathy for the plight of the Tibetan people, director Jean-Jacques Annaud's true-life tale about a self-obsessed Austrian mountaineer who learns selflessness in the Himalayas too rarely delivers at a simple emotional level.
  11. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Rita Kempley
    60
    Unfortunately, Harrer's inner struggle isn't as grand as the sweep of Jean-Jacques Annaud's direction.
  12. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    50
    Pitt isn't a bad actor, but he's way out of his depth and never disappears into the character -- a selfish rogue who gets a jolt of enlightenment at the feet of the Dalai Lama -- the way a superior actor like Daniel Day-Lewis might have.
  13. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Barbara Shulgasser
    50
    Becky Johnston ( "The Prince of Tides" ) did creditable work on the screenplay, but there are times when this story about a truly rotten fellow seems to be one big jump cut.
  14. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    50
    Unfortunately, this visually sumptuous epic is the very definition of a "prestige production," swaddled in good taste and better intentions.
  15. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    50
    Annaud has given Seven Years In Tibet an epic scope, packed with beautiful scenery, lush costumes, and elaborate sets. Which would all be well and good if they didn't often seem like the reason the movie exists.
  16. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    50
    Though Pitt is as attractive as ever, "Seven Years" offers other things to look at and in fact functions better as a travelogue than as a drama.
  17. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    40
    An overextended, episodic disappointment.
  18. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    10
    Seven Years in Tibet feels more like Seven Days in the Movie Theater. It refuses to come alive--not even when Brad Pitt, hirsute as a yak, wanders the frozen Himalayas with an Austrian accent that probably gave his dialogue coach hives.
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