| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
As much fun as anything director/co-writer Jane Campion has ever filmed. Holy Smoke lets it all hang out.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
Sexy, snotty, vulnerable and above all contentious, she's (Winslet) the catalyst in a movie that creates more man-woman electricity than any other movie this year.
|
| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It's a funny, insightful film whose feminist undertones don't overwhelm the story and characters.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
At once hilarious and serious, cruel and tender, and bristling with vitality, Holy Smoke is the right movie for the millennium, envisioning new possibilities in the way people view and relate to one another.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
What transpires is so rich that I've seen this movie three times. The joy of being involved with two wholly truthful (if colorfully fucked up) characters is that exhilarating.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
If this is an example of Australian live-and-let- live, it is very likable.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
A quirky and satisfying love story.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Winslet and Keitel are brilliant as cult member & deprogrammer.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Examiner
By its hilarious, grotesquely over-the-top climax, Holy Smoke is ideologically, metaphorically out of control, as if it has risen from the '70s ashes.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Too tightly made not to keep you watching, Holy Smoke is also too hokey and didactic to take seriously.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
I'm not even sure the movie makes sense at times, yet Campion's offbeat rhythms and eye for startling images always made me happy to be looking at the screen.
|
| 70 |
Village Voice
Filled with flashy sight gags, overwrought performances, and madly overlapping dialogue.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Sun-Times
A smaller picture like this, shot out of the mainstream, has a better chance of being quirky and original. And quirky it is, even if not successful.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
In the end, Holy Smoke crashes and burns.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Either Campion is the most inspirational director of performers or Winslet the most carnal.
|
| 63 |
Miami Herald
In a movie packed with broad humor, the best jokes are so small they're easy to overlook.
|
| 60 |
Salon.com
Kate Winslet is a mesmerizing force in her own right, but too much of Holy Smoke turns out to be hot air.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
As Holy Smoke moves from its early mix of rapture and humor into this more serious, confrontational stage, it runs into trouble.
|
| 60 |
Mr. Showbiz
It's not a movie you could call dispassionate, however aimless and unfocused. It's a Molotov cocktail tossed in several directions at once.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Winslet and Keitel are perfectly matched, go-for-broke actors handed dramatic license to do a psychic striptease.
|
| 58 |
Portland Oregonian
It's an often lovely, constantly assured film that now and again burps forth a really remarkable vision. But it's also half-nuts -- maybe three-quarters.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Campion is an imaginative filmmaker, but here she reduces a fascinating subject to a two-character soap opera that often seems contrived on both spiritual and psychological levels.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
This is mainly smoke, not fire.
|
| 50 |
Charlotte Observer
Wrestles with big questions, gets the upper hand during the first hour, then loses its grip. By the end, it's flat on its back on the mat.
|
| 50 |
Variety
David Rooney
Original in every sense.
|
| 40 |
Dallas Observer
If Campion has a message in all this -- something about the eternal battle of the sexes -- it is far from clear.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
It lurches ineptly from lame comedy to hokey melodrama.
|
| 30 |
TNT RoughCut
Sarah Raskin
Just not enough for me.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
There's so much wrong with this movie.
|
| 20 |
Austin Chronicle
A forgivable error, but an error nonetheless.
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