- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100An indelible portrait of an American family at its most blithely macabre.
-
100The Queen of Versailles turns out to be a portrait -- appalling, absorbing and improbably affecting -- of how, even within a system seemingly designed to ensure that the rich get richer, sometimes the rich get poorer.
-
100A succulently entertaining movie that invites you to splash around in the dreams and follies of folks so rich they're the 1 percent of the 1 percent. It's like a champagne bath laced with arsenic.
-
91To an extent, Greenfield tries to have it both ways with her film: she allows us to enjoy the fantasy of being rich, while also letting us see the bastards suffer a little.
-
90Schadenfreude and disgust may be unavoidable, but to withhold all sympathy from the Siegels is to deny their humanity and shortchange your own. Marvel at the ornate frame, mock the vulgarity of the images if you want, but let's not kid ourselves. If this film is a portrait, it is also a mirror.
-
88Although it's a guilty pleasure, The Queen of Versailles is artful enough that both the prosecution and the defense could invoke it when the peasants cry "Off with their heads!"
-
88Everything about The Queen of Versailles, a documentary both sharply observant and deliciously funny, is jumbo-sized – the riches, the rags, his ego, her breasts, their steroidal pursuit of happiness.
-
88By the end, the movie has pulled off a small miracle: You become absorbed in the lives of these people for who they are and not what they own.
-
88Some of Jackie's dialogue is so good it would distinguish a sitcom.
-
88The Queen of Versailles combines the voyeuristic thrills of reality TV with the soul-revealing artistry of great portraiture and the head-shaking revelations of solid investigative reporting.
-
88Queen of Versailles is still worthwhile, not because it questions all-American entitlement but because it prompts us to think hard about what, exactly, we believe we're entitled to.
-
85Greenfield's refusal to pass judgment on the Siegels lends her subjects and their marriage unexpected complexity and depth - especially Jackie, a true force of nature.
-
Jul 19, 201285There's a certain type of painful honesty that shines through in both their interviews toward the end and, particularly, in those with the staff.
-
83Slickly made if not particularly stylish, the movie maintains its entertainment value for picking ideal models of American excess.
-
Sep 9, 201280Never has grotesque wealth looked so unenviable, or its removal been so entertaining, as in this garishly watchable riches-to-rags documentary.
-
Sep 9, 201280Never has grotesque wealth looked so unenviable, or its removal been so entertaining, as in this garishly watchable riches-to-rags documentary.
-
Sep 3, 201280A bizarre and mesmerising journey to the heart of Cloud Cuckoo Land.
-
80It's perfectly possible to like the title character of Lauren Greenfield's documentary – Jackie Siegel – while detesting everything she represents: grotesque financial inequality, jaw-dropping ignorance and appalling bad taste.
-
80The Queen of Versailles is funny, sad, infuriating, instructive. It's the American Dream inflated to ridiculous extremes, until it bursts.
-
Jul 19, 201280In Greenfield's canny and compassionate view, their post-collapse reality check is an emblem of consumerism as affliction, and surprisingly relatable.
-
80This is certainly an apt time to make a crowd-pleasing movie about rich villains, but Greenfield is not an exploiter - she's an artist.
-
80For Greenfield, the Siegels are a brilliant metaphor for everything farkakte about the U.S. economy and the culture that shaped it.
-
80This timely and involving documentary elicits both sympathy and schadenfreude, as Greenfield regards her all-too-vilifiable subjects with a complexity that should impress viewers of all economic and political persuasions.
-
75The Queen of Versailles leaves viewers with one feeling about the Siegels: Let them eat stale cake.
-
75Watching The Queen of Versailles you don't know whether to laugh or cry.
-
75The Siegels make the Kardashians and Donald Trump look like tasteful pikers when it comes to egregiously conspicuous consumption, sheer hubris and utter refusal to take responsibility for their actions.
-
75The point of the film is not to scorn or mock the Siegels, despite their excesses. They embody the quintessentially American urge to live beyond one's means. Their saga is simply the story of a nation's materialism writ large.
-
Jul 17, 201275Lauren Greenfield's film evolves from an ode to entitled obliviousness to a more evenhanded character study, tracing the fault lines that develop within the Siegel family.
-
70Greenfield's fly on the wall view of obscene wealth punctured like a toy balloon is as current as a blog or a headline.
-
70Like a Theodore Dreiser novel for our time, infused with the vivid, vulgar spirit of reality TV. It often had the sold-out Eccles Center howling, but also has elements of profound tragedy and allegory.
-
67The Queen of Versailles encourages the very worst tendencies in the audience: to sneer at the Siegels, to marvel at their tackiness, to root for their fall from grace.
-
Jul 17, 201260I've seen The Queen of Versailles twice, and both times the audience laughed frequently at the Siegel family's sheer tackiness.
-
60Director Lauren Greenfield has a catty eye, but she's not after simple schadenfreude as the Siegels' time-share hotels are foreclosed, the kids have to fly coach [gasp], and poops go unscooped by a phalanx of laid-off servants.
-
50The Queen of Versailles will prompt loathing not only among the so-called 99 Percent, but among those in the top 1 percent who would like someone more sane to represent them on camera.
-
40The steady wink wink of Queen of Versailles is wearing. I'd say Greenfield is exploiting a narcissist's willingness to talk endlessly about herself, but I think it just as likely that Jackie is exploiting Greenfield's willingness to listen. And to keep that wonderful mechanical eye focused on her.