Color Me Kubrick

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Color Me Kubrick is a far more modest movie, but in some ways is more successful than "The Hoax" in conveying how deeply people want to believe something is true against all evidence.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

A sly, enormously entertaining romp based on the antics of real-life Brit conman Alan Conway who rooked his way around '90s London posing as Stanley Kubrick.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Color Me Kubrick is like a nice, deep, clear cocktail of ammonia on the rocks: bracing, comic, astonishing, all of which hide its poison center.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The film reveals, rather delectably, how potent the power of suggestion can be in a world gone madly groupie.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

In Color Me Kubrick, John Malkovich has one of the roles of his life, and he acts it up like a haughty gourmet who's just picked up a succulent treat.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

The filmmakers have wisely turned it into a comedy, and a wickedly entertaining one at that.

Los Angeles Times Ed Gonzalez

Scarcely an insightful biographical portrait, Color Me Kubrick is still interesting, perhaps even intimidating, as a study of the way fandom can so readily be turned against itself.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Even if it doesn't add up to more than a fitfully amusing collection of comic sketches, Color Me Kubrick is a platform for John Malkovich to burst into lurid purple flame.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This 2005 British feature by writer Anthony Frewin and director Brian Cook, both former Kubrick assistants, uses Conway's unlikely saga to mount an appreciative send-up of a certain style of gay extravagance.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

A playground for Malkovich – enjoyable enough but not terribly deep.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's entertaining if not exactly enlightening.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Color Me Kubrick digs all sorts of devilish ironies out of this "true...ish story," and it's a fine dark farce before turning sad and, worse, monotonous. The con wears off before the movie does, but while it's in the air, "Kubrick" spins with bogus cheer.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Malkovich pulls out all the gaudy stops.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

Best appreciated as a rather amusing farce called The John Malkovich Show, the movie's every scene is anchored, then stolen, by the commanding thespian's Alan act.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Great fun for the first 20 minutes - which include Kubrickian tracking shots and music from "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange" - but seems long at 86.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

The film makes funny use of music (particularly Lionel Richie's "Hello") and excellent use of Malkovich, but it literally only has one idea in its head, and when that idea runs dry, it's as lost as Conway is without his plethora of Kubrick masks.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

If you can't watch John Malkovich being John Malkovich, it's still a kick watching him play Alan Conway, a gay Brit who pretended to be the legendary and reclusive director Stanley Kubrick during the 1990s.

Village Voice Nathan Lee

I find it hard to believe that Conway bamboozled half of London simply by announcing his name, and it's regrettable that the filmmakers premise their picture on such improbable gullibility. The real Conway was assuredly slier than his bio-pic incarnation; he ought to have been played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The movie is endless even at less than 90 minutes. You could use it, "A Clockwork Orange" style, as aversion therapy for seemingly incorrigible con artists.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Director Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin were both intimates of the real Kubrick, which I guess counts for something. But for what, exactly? Does it uniquely qualify them to make a mean-spirited, trashy and intermittently funny film about a guy who wasn't Kubrick?

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

At best a kitschy "Catch Me If You Can" and at worst a tedious comedy that grows more tiresome by every self-consciously irreverent minute.