Hannibal Rising

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

Hannibal Rising isn't a classic, but it's entertaining and a surprisingly fitting addition to the franchise.

Premiere Jenni Miller

The story's beginning is in a rush to get to the the killings, which get more and more disgusting.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

This strikes me as the final nail in the franchise's coffin. I can't name an actor who could have made young Lecter as interesting as the older one, but Ulliel does not come close.

TV Guide Ken Fox

It's a handsomely mounted but poky thriller undone by a fatally miscast lead.

Film Threat Mark Bell

This is essentially a by-the-numbers revenge film with some attempts at deeper characterization. The difference between this film and, say, "Batman Begins" is that Bruce Wayne, upon finding the tormentors of his youth, never tried to kill and eat them.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a handsome film, but the pace is continually gummy and the set-ups stiff and artificial. Most crucially, nothing in it vanquishes the sensation that we're being sold something superfluous -- like a service contract for a carton of eggs.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

What Hannibal Rising is, mostly, is a hoot.

Village Voice Jim Ridley

This comically fastidious telling of the Hannibal Lecter origin story completes the extreme makeover of grindhouse fare that "The Silence of the Lambs" started 15 years ago. Meaning: Respectable audiences who wouldn't be caught dead at a (sniff!) horror movie still want severed heads; they just want the bloody meal served on Royal Dalton china.

Variety Dennis Harvey

This upmarket slasher is a well-produced but slow-moving thriller that never quite roars to life.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Most of the movie makes too much sense and is no fun at

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Thomas Harris adapted his own bestseller and Peter Webber, who previously directed "Girl with a Pearl Earring," had the unenviable task of trying to give this glop, which is too gruesome to be campy, a high gloss. It should be called Man With a Severed Head.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

Director Peter Webber can't do much about what's missing from the story: a soul or a sense of purpose.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Ulliel, the meek missing soldier in "A Very Long Engagement," makes such a tedious Lecter that this quickly becomes a chore, though Dominic West ("The Wire") is good as a French detective on the madman's trail.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Hannibal Rising is basically a Steven Seagal vigilante movie with a hero who eats the people he kills. At least it's ecofriendly.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie streamlines much of Harris's book. It's a shame, because it results in the movie's fundamental flaw -- the one-dimensionality of Hannibal.

Empire Kim Newman

Gong Li is welcome as Hannibal's Japanese aunt-in-law/mentor, Gaspard Ulliel isn't a bad young Lecter and Webber's direction is intermittently classy -- but this is a footnote rather than a film.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

For better and worse, the movie is more attractive and competently assembled than its schlock peers. That's refreshing, but it hardly excuses the appalling lack of suspense, intermittent tastelessness, or shockingly low camp quotient.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Errors in logic will delight the attentive.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

Who would have thought mass murder and cannibalism could be so dull?

Los Angeles Times Sam Adams

Bad as Harris' Hannibal Rising screenplay (his first) is, at least it's an improvement on his dreadful book, streamlining its convoluted action and discarding large chunks of unspeakable dialogue.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

This Hannibal is a stick-in-the-mud altogether lacking in the wit, gourmet appetites and romantic flair required of any surrogate for Sir Anthony Hopkins. By the end of two full hours, it's only Harris' head you long to see on a plate.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Not just a bad film, Hannibal Rising is downright dull, which is a far worse crime.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Not quite repellent enough to avoid tedium, Hannibal Rising is both too familiar in portraying Hannibal as a Dracula-like aristocrat monster, and crud in its exploitation of wartime atrocities.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Hannibal Rising reduces this great creature of the pop imagination to a Eurotrash Boy Scout throwing a homicidal snit fit.

Chicago Tribune Phil Vettel

A sort-of combination of "Lambs," "Batman Begins" and "The Joy of Cooking," Hannibal Rising ostensibly dramatizes the atrocities that turned Hannibal Lecter from loving child to serial killer. But this film is larded up with so many food references that I'm undecided whether this story belongs in a film compendium or a recipe file.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The funniest movie of the year - a true laugh riot. Viewers will be holding their sides to contain the laughter. Forget Borat - if you're looking for something hilarious, this is the movie to see. What's that? It's not supposed to be a comedy. Oops.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

For the first time in the film series, Harris wrote the screenplay himself, which means the movie is practically identical to the book. In other words, they both stink.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Dull and dreary prequel.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

It's all quite a mess, with awkward performances, worse dialogue and a painfully protracted running time conspiring against any chance of enjoyment, even in a so-bad-it's-good guilty pleasure way.

The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

Silly, slack and unforgivably tedious, Thomas Harris's screenplay is padded with interminable flashbacks and a bombastic score that telegraphs every emotion Hannibal represses. And there are a lot of them.