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Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Cradle Will Rock
EMAILPRINTBuena Vista Pictures

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 31 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 5 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Tim Robbins
Directed by: Tim Robbins
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 10, 1999
DVD: May 16, 2000
Running Time: 132 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for some language and sexuality
Starring Hank Azaria, Ruben Blades, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Venessa Redgrave, and Susan Sarandon
Centered around a leftist musical drama and attempts to stop its production, the film is a true story of art and politics in America in the 1930s.
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
TV Guide Steve Simels
Stunningly cinematic and audacious on every level, writer/director Tim Robbins's look at the collision of the Depression-era art world and politics may well be a masterpiece.
Read Full Review >Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard
Even if the great debate that pits artistic integrity against corporate compromise doesn't thrill you, see Cradle Will Rock anyway. It's marvelous, provocative entertainment; art for art's sake.
USA Today Mike Clark
Rock actually rocks out as one of the year's most purely entertaining movies (just keep thinking: Bill Murray as a ventriloquist).
Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday
The movie's best moments belong to Bill Murray,
TNT RoughCut Don Kaye
Entertaining and educational.
Austin Chronicle Russell Smith
Commands respect as mainstream filmmaking with more of an agenda than just pimping cinematic junk food to the brain-dead masses.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It's packed with such passion, humor, fine acting in small roles - there are no big ones - and vitality in the storytelling that the lesson comes across entertainingly.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It needs a study guide, and viewing "Citizen Kane" might be a good place to start.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Robbins the agitprop celebrity may be blowin' in the wind, but Robbins, the son of a folksinger, knows how to get audiences clapping along.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Some may find the movie too crowded and preachy to serve as a meaningful history lesson, but it will delight anyone who thinks our cynical age could benefit from recalling the vigorous idealism and venturesome artistry of a bygone era.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Christine Dolen
An ensemble cast brimming with great theater actors and movie stars tears into a collection of meaty, moving, funny roles, with largely vibrant results.
Variety Todd McCarthy
Succeeds far more often than not in delivering a credible, kaleidoscopic portrait of creative, and often famous, individuals.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Its nervy decision to cut as wide a swath as possible through one of the most exciting and meaningful periods of our history have created something that's impossible not to both applaud and enjoy.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
A frustrating, pedantic, cacophonous jumble of a picture, peopled with as many straw men and caricatures as living, breathing humans.
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Cradle Will Rock is the masterpiece that wasn't, a magnificent opportunity blown to hell.
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
An ambitious effort that fails as satire and as history, although it probably succeeds as a cautionary tale.
San Francisco Examiner Edvin Beitiks
A fun movie, with moments guaranteed to bring you close to tears. But, like most of Robbins' work, it's a cartoon, an emotional cartoon.
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
A missed opportunity to shed light on one of America's most turbulent times.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Charles Taylor
Obviously influenced by the style of Robert Altman's multi-character extravaganzas, Robbins has seized on this incident as the centerpiece in a carnival about the conflicts among art, politics and commerce.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Historical forces and famous ghosts jostle past each other in this evocation of mid-1930s New York like harried commuters at Grand Central Station.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
Robbins has made a drastically different film from the one Welles envisioned -- it's wacky where Welles is absurd, cynical where Welles is canny.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
There's something stirring and gutsy about this evocation of collective ferment -- not to mention timely, in the wake of the Seattle uprising against the World Trade Organization.
Read Full Review >Film.com Peter Brunette
Thoroughly artificial and overly schematic, to the point of caricature even, but often lively and witty nonetheless.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
Although Robbins might have drawn some of these characters with less obviousness and more satirical bite, he ably keeps this lively, complicated film on track.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's an interesting and likably ambitious movie with an ensemble of mostly engaging character vignettes, but, sadly, it misses its mark.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Cradle Will Rock is left in mid-rock, as it were, its energy squandered, its sense of history confused, its sound and fury ultimately signifying nothing.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Robbins eschews leftist diatribes for a bold cartoon version of history. It's as crowded and energetic as a big parade...and just about as subtle.
Dallas Observer Andy Klein
In the end, it's all just too damned much. It's more exhausting than edifying.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
There is hardly a moment during this overlong, stunningly smug exercise in moral self-satisfaction when you actually care about a character, real or invented.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Yoon C. gave it a 3:
Preachy, drab, and uninspired, stylistically and dramatically anti-thetical to everything Orson Welles stood for. This is cultural/political nostalgia reduced to Sesame Street song n dance.
Anca Rusu gave it a 9:
I watched this movie very late at night after a most tiring work day. It was 4a.m. when was over but I couldn't close my eyes for another hour. Considering the process I went through that's a brilliant movie and as all movies of its kind does not let you sleep.
