Tetro
Metascore
65 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 26
  3. Negative: 0 out of 26
view
per page
  1. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Calvin Wilson
    100
    Shot mostly in black and white and imbued with a romanticism that's at once nostalgic and exhilarating, Tetro sneaks up on you. What threatens to be a mere exercise in style proves to be as involving as it is inventive.
  2. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    88
    A delirious surprise .
  3. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    80
    Certainly it isn't the greatest of Coppola's pictures, or even of his independent productions, but those are pretty high standards. It has a verve and vitality that's been missing from his pictures for 25 years, and its various and visible flaws all result from too much of that verve rather than too little. I enjoyed it tremendously.
  4. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    80
    As with "Youth Without Youth," this new movie feels like a transitional work but also an inspired one, the creation of a director who, having recently turned 70, has set off on a new adventure that requires more from his audiences than some might be willing to give. Which is itself a sign of vigorous artistic renewal.
  5. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    Here is a film that, for all of its plot, depends on characters in service of their emotional turmoil. It feels good to see Coppola back in form.
  6. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    75
    Unabashedly theatrical and richly cinematic, even when it's falling apart.
  7. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    What a grand and dazzling route Coppola takes.
  8. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    75
    The result is visually inventive, narratively edgy, and unlike anything else.
  9. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    75
    The movie is alive from beginning to end, and it's a pleasure to see at least one big-name director get out of the prison of his own reputation.
  10. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    75
    A family melodrama with charm.
  11. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Stephen Cole
    75
    Tetro is Coppola's best film since Apocalypse Now because the filmmaker has abandoned conventional drama – what for him had become a straightjacket – indulging in a collage style that allows him to honour favourite filmmakers.
  12. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    75
    It's the product of a great dreamer and aesthete, rather than an authentic emotional experience--a gorgeous, crystalline bauble that really catches the light.
  13. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    70
    It has style to burn, eye-catching acting by an international cast and a story that harkens back to many literary classic with its themes of a family torn apart, brothers in conflict and a son's rivalry with a towering father figure.
  14. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    70
    For writer-director Coppola, Tetro is a cri de coeur, one more from the heart.
  15. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    70
    Tetro turns out to be not one movie but, at the very least, two--a Fellini-esque (or Coppola-esque) concatenation of drama, dance and opera (with a nod to Alphonse Daudet), and a modest, appealing coming-of-age story that involves Maribel Verdú (from “Y Tu Mamá También”) as Tetro’s girlfriend.
  16. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    70
    Coppola's fondness for the operatic gets the better of him as the action approaches a climax, but the movie is girded by a sense of knotty family history.
  17. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    67
    Like Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola has gone from being the filmmaker of his time to becoming a make-it-up-as-you-go-along indie free-shooter.
  18. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    67
    The increasingly crude plotting and stock dialogue are killers. All the beauty the eye can hold can't, in this case, fool the ear and brain into falling for Coppola's strained tale.
  19. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Betsy Sharkey
    60
    In Tetro, nearly every time Coppola should have clung to intimacy, he opts for excess. Especially tedious are the meta excerpts from staged productions -- overcompensation trying to masquerade as illumination. Regrettable since there is such fine work being done in the smaller moments.
  20. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    50
    The more dramatic revelations and tragic inevitabilities that turn up, the harder it is not to laugh. Give credit to its maker for directing with an earnestness suggesting a pretentious 22-year-old. Having passed through the phases of Interesting Apprentice, Mad Genius, Chastened Bankrupt and Shameless Wage Slave, Coppola at 70 may be the world's oldest student filmmaker.
  21. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    50
    Coppola’s rejuvenated sense of career is a welcome addition to the world of filmmaking, even if the two films he’s made in the new millennium (2007’s "Youth Without Youth" and now this) are not up to his own self-set high standards.
  22. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    50
    When Coppola finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods. Tetro represents something of a middle ground in that respect.
  23. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: John Anderson
    50
    Tetro has no internal tension and should have been a comedy.
  24. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    50
    An inchoate mass of half-baked (and sometimes blackened) Oedipal dramaturgy. Coppola has made some of the greatest films ever made in traditional narrative mode, but whenever he goes into his indie-outsider dance, he stumbles badly.
  25. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    40
    Despite the overwrought plot and unabashed pretension, there's something admirable about the fact that Coppola clearly made this movie for himself. But he shouldn't be surprised if few others join him in watching it.
  26. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    40
    Alas, in Tetro he (Coppola) has made a movie in which plenty happens but nothing rings true.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.3 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 15 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 1 out of 4
  1. amk76mak
    0
    Just want to say that i love the Dracula and Apocalypse But..... You everyone begging for FFC and don/t see that whole 15 years he shot holy crap.
  2. AlanY
    10
    Visually and dramatically spellbinding. The dramatic tension is perfectly paced, the principal actors are riveting, and I especially liked the cinematography. This is not a mass-market film, but the work of an artist.… Full Review »
  3. CaroleG
    8
    It is very hard to have a successful story based solely on revelations of what happened in the past. Somehow, magically, Coppola pulled this off with "The Conversation," in which he held us fascinated, as the puzzle of what happened slowly gets solved. With "Tetro," there is no coherent story, i.e., a story that utterly coheres. I have to ascribe this to Coppola's using material that is very personal and then trying to make it interesting to the viewer; alas, he drags in whatever he thinks will work, even though the action-enhancing parts are not all of a piece. Because there is no story to follow, we are dependent on the two main characters, but I was unable to care about either of them. All this negativity aside, the film is gorgeous to watch, in its dramatic black and white, an occasionally unexpected angle, the way the camera can make us focus on a small area as though it were the entire world, reminiscent of old Japanese films such a "Tokyo Story." I wanted to love this film. I barely liked it. The very beginning held my interest, and then for a long time the grievances were played and re-played, which I found boring, and finally there were bursts of action that took the film to a level of improbability from which it was impossible to suspend disbelief. I heard Coppola on the radio recently talking about himself--it was utterly fascinating. Great talkers and great directors are not necessarily great writers. I wish someone else had written "Tetro."… Full Review »
See all user reviews »