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Auto Focus
Sony Pictures Classics


7.2

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 5 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong sexuality, nudity, language, some drug use and violence

Starring Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Maria Bello, Rita Wilson, Ron Leibman, Bruce Solomon, Michael E. Rodgers, and Ed Begley Jr.

This absorbing glimpse into the colorful life, and mysterious death, of actor Bob Crane is also a fascinating chronicle of American male sexual identity in the 60's and 70's. (Sony Pictures Classics)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Michael Gerbosi Robert Graysmith (bookThe Murder of Bob Crane)
DIRECTED BY:	Paul Schrader
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 18, 2003 Video: March 18, 2003 Theatrical: October 18, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	104 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The film is pitch-perfect in its decor, music, clothes, cars, language and values. It takes place during those heady years between the introduction of the Pill and the specter of AIDS, when men shaped as adolescents by Playboy in the 1950s now found some of their fantasies within reach.

100

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Michael Gerbosi's script might have reduced Crane to a clueless cliche were it not for the bruised humanity that Greg Kinnear brings to the role. Kinnear is dynamite.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

In this admirably unconventional film, director Paul Schrader is interested in just about everything BUT traditional biopic business.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

In Auto Focus, the strangely wonderful and weirdly touching new film from Paul Schrader, the comedy and the tragedy keep getting mixed up.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

The set and art direction are superb, evoking Sixties and Seventies décor with a dazzling precision.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Schrader's strongest movie since "Affliction," is another meditation on American masculinity powerfully told with great wit and style.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

This movie is for select tastes. It's not the fusillade of porn that wears you down, but the melancholy of watching an unremarkable man glide down the tubes as if on a water slide.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The performances are vividly alive.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Certainly the movie is one of Schrader's most accomplished, and most entertaining, but there's something cold and unforgiving about his vision, delivered with a severity that only a bred-in-the-bone Calvinist could muster.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Kinnear's performance has to be one of the most sympathetic acts of decency one actor has ever extended to another. Crane always wanted to be a real, respectable movie actor. Channeled through Kinnear, he finally gets his wish.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Is Auto Focus a cautionary tale or just a morbid, voyeuristic foray into kitsch and kink? Whatever it is, it's not pretty - it's the cinematic equivalent of soiled, stained sheets. You'll want to run out of the theater straight to a Laundromat.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Skates over depravity when, like Crane, it should have dug down deeper.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

A compelling motion picture that illustrates an American tragedy and shows the transformation of a decent family man into someone whose struggles with addiction and association with the wrong man bring him to an untimely end, with no hope of retribution.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A compelling, sympathetic portrait.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

On one level, it's an unsettling biopic and an acerbic look at a bygone media age. On another, it's a cautionary tale with uncommon relevance and bite.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film is so explicit (endless swinging parties and porno scenes, more bouncing breasts than a Russ Meyer movie) that it finally becomes the thing it fears.

Newsweek David Ansen

It’s not a particularly sexy movie. What’s shocking to Schrader is not Crane’s promiscuity, but his obtuseness. It’s the story of the unbearable lightness of Bob.

TV Guide Ken Fox

This ultra-stylish film is far more interested in exploring its own central image -- the camera -- than the forensic minutia of the mystery.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Schrader directs with a very smooth hand, providing a good-natured and frequently amusing spin to eventually grim material that aptly reflects the protagonist's almost unfailing good humor.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The inventive performances -- keep this story interesting in spite of its puritanical framework.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Gets to you like a low-grade fever, a malaise with no known antidote. When it was over, I wasn't sure if I needed a drink, a shower or a lifelong vow of chastity.

The New Yorker David Denby

Certainly holds one's attention, but it's a strange and grim experience, ice-cold and borderline pointless. [28 October 2002, p. 119]

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Paul Schrader's movies depict dark nights of the soul, but sometimes you feel like you have to end the dark night with a shower. Auto Focus is such a movie.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

When the bloody climax comes, we look on apathetically, as desensitized to the violence as a pornographer is to sex.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Uplifting? Not bloody likely. Mesmerizing? Very, thanks to Greg Kinnear's eerie performance as Crane and director Paul Schrader's lucid depiction of the character's happy-go-lucky descent into hell.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It never answers the key question: Why should we care?

Time Richard Corliss

Schrader's objectification of sad and stupid material is neither tragic nor transgressive. It is just undramatic and uninvolving.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Auto Focus is a gutless wonder.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

It grows repetitious, both in its account of Crane's ritual behavior and in clumsily written -- and stolidly directed -- scenes between Crane and Carpenter, two men acting out their own unacknowledged sexual drama.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's a clammy, depressing movie, but not a very illuminating one.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Kinnear's mesmerizing performance comes close to redeeming Auto Focus, suggesting depths the film never gets around to exposing, but Schrader's alternately flat and histrionic storytelling sends the film hurtling beyond redemption.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Auto Focus doesn't really go anywhere, but then neither does any form of obsessive-compulsive behavior -- which may be Schrader's point.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

This film about sex is so joyless, so astonishingly unsexy, it's like watching porn with your grandfather going tsk-tsk-tsk over your shoulder for two hours.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Schrader really isn't interested in Crane except as the straw man for his moral lessons about sin and sexuality and the nature of celebrity. Auto Focus is the perfect capper to Crane's career: Even in a movie about himself, he remains minor.

Slate David Edelstein

Schrader is like a reformed addict who isn't even honest enough to show what once gave him pleasure. He's the most dangerous kind of crusader. In Auto Focus, he makes you hate sex and movies equally.

Film Threat Phil Hall

Perhaps it is a shame that no one thought of digitally restoring and theatrically releasing the sex videos that Crane made with the many women he pleasured...that would have been far more entertaining than anything found in Auto Focus.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it a 6:
Mounting a film around a minor actor like Bob Crane is risky, because in all likelihood, he had nothing to lose anyway; porn, or no porn. The best Crane probably could've hoped for was a game show host-gig like his "Hogan's Heroes" co-star Rich ard Dawson. "Auto-Focus" goes overboard in positioning John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) as the pusher (the temptation of home video) and Crane (Greg Kinnear) as an innocent, who would order grapefruit juice at a bar. "Auto-Focus" is somewhat similar to "Almost Famous", since both films have as secondary storylines, how changes in entertainment (home-video, and the commodifacation of youth culture, respectively) transforms the American landscape.

Stephen S. gave it a 6:
The smartest thing about this movie is its double-meaning title. If the truth is as it appears, sixties Hogans Heroes TV star Bob Crane was another fool who chose a well-trodden pathway to hell. But, given Schraders preoccupations, you can see why hed be interested in Cranes progressive loss of self-esteem and self. In the first half of the movie, the director tends to assume our dramatic interest in Crane, rather than riveting the audience. He perhaps goes half a genre too far. At one extreme, there are factual, documentary inserts, voiced over by the Crane character. In the centre is the body (or bodies, naked) of the movie. At the other extreme, a surreal dream sequence (mocked up as a Hogans Heroes scene) dramatises Cranes vacillation between family and folly. Maybe the whole enterprise would work better as a straight documentary or docu-drama. Greg Kinnear does well as Crane. Willem Dafoe is genuinely creepy as the depraved sidekick who lines up the loose ladies for him. The period pieces are stylish, especially the hippie pool-party up in the LA hills. Auto Focus comes home strongly, cranking up the dramatic intensity as Cranes life and career unravel. I would still say that Schrader is too good for the material. This doesnt compare with his superb adaptation of the Russell Banks novel Affliction.

Aaron L. gave it a 7:
While the film is interesting, well acted, and nicely directed, it fails to really dig into the psyche of Bob Crane and attempt to show us possibly why this proclaimed "good guy" got involved in this type of addiction. The script just scratches the surface and doesn't dig as deep as it should. I felt by the end that I knew more about Carpy (Dafoe) than about Crane. Instead of creating a portrait of a troubled man, Schrader settles for an above average HBO flick.

Christian V. gave it a 10:
This movie rules!!! Kinnear and Dafoe put on brilliant performances in this movie. A great mixture of comedic relief and conflict. The opening credits remind of another great film The Kid Stays In The Picture.

Marc K. gave it a 7:
A good job, and a fair portrayal of Bob Crane, IMHO. Kinnear does a surprisingly good job. Dafoe plays a great sleaze bag, which didn't seem like too much of a stretch for him. Sometimes I find Schrader can be too over the top in his movies, and with this subject matter, I thought he might be. But he did a good job.

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Auto Focus Sony Pictures Classics

Auto Focus
Sony Pictures Classics