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Nobel Son

EMAIL PRINTFreestyle Releasing

7.7 User Score:

Generally unfavorable reviews

Based on 18 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 20 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Comedy | Drama

Written by: Jody Savin
Randall Miller

Directed by: Randall Miller

Release Date:
Theatrical: December 5, 2008
DVD: June 9, 2009

Running Time: 102 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: R for some violent gruesome images, language and sexuality

Starring Alan Rickman, Bryan Greenberg, Shawn Hatosy, Mary Steenburgen, Bill Pullman, Eliza Dushku, and Danny DeVito

A son struggles to finish his thesis when his father wins the Nobel Prize in chemistry, making life all the more difficult for him and his mother, a well-known forensic. (Freestyle Releasing)

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...

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A mercilessly convoluted version of a Twister, that genre in which the plot whacks us as if it's taking batting practice. I will not hint at anything that happens. I will simply observe that it's all entertaining.

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Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A smart aleck-y kidnapping caper that whooshes around to a thumping electronic beat.

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Variety Ronnie Scheib

Uneven but enjoyably titillating black comedy should elate Rickman fans while pleasing aficionados of extra-flakey caper flicks.

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Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Nobel Son is not good. Nor is it bad. It exists, instead, somewhere in the middle ground of interesting enough to hold one's attention without actually providing any fresh, sensible or nonderivative developments.

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Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Guy Ritchie made a name for himself with scuzz, but even his shtick has exceeded its sell-by date. Nobel Son goes further, crossing the contortions of "The Usual Suspects" with the shallowness of certain intellectual family melodramas.

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Los Angeles Times Robert Abele

Shows strains of stylistic overkill with egregious flash-edit tricks and sped-up camera moves, while the signal-flare plotting indicates that perhaps a bit more time could have been taken on the screenplay.

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Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

I enjoyed Eliza Dushku's mad poetess, probably for the wrong reasons, but with a project this meager, you take your artful sneers and scenic diversions where you can get them.

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Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The plot twists are mostly predicated on the characters' improbably shifting loyalties, the sort of thing you can get away with only when the people in your movie are drained of all compassion.

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Washington Post Philip Kennicott

It's all wildly implausible and occasionally fun, but it could be so much better if director Randall Miller (who co-wrote the screenplay) had thrown in a little more character development and excised a half-dozen crazy plot twists.

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New York Post Kyle Smith

Rickman has fun playing a lecherous old bastard of a professor in Nobel Son, a pulpy would-be comic thriller, but the movie doesn't deserve him.

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San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

A dreary little thriller that irritates more than it thrills.

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The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The movie is so relentlessly self-congratulatory, you can't help becoming thoroughly sick of it.

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Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Randall Miller (Bottle Shock), appears to be trying to cross a bad Elmore Leonard thriller with a bad indie-festival family-angst comedy. He gives us the worst of both worlds.

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Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

What finally sinks the film is that the more it tries to dazzle us, the more uninterested we become.

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The New York Times Manohla Dargis

An aggressively noisy exercise in style over substance about nasty people doing nasty things to one another in (sigh) Southern California.

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Village Voice Tim Grierson

Director and co-writer Randall Miller is so ill at ease with the basic building blocks of the genre that Nobel Son quickly announces itself as one of those misbegotten clunkers where almost every creative decision isn't just wrong but tone-deaf.

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Austin Chronicle Theresa Everline

Even the dependable Rickman can't find his footing here. As he lamely hams it up, you can see him trying to rally himself and then deciding it's not worth the effort.

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The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Nobel Son sadistically resurrects the Tarantino knockoff--an unloved, foul-mouthed little bastard of a subgenre that should now go away forever.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jay H. gave it a5:
Very uneven film, but it misses the mark overall. There were just too many slow patches, and I just could not get into the film, even after several attempts to start it over from the beginning. Mary Steenburgen is great though.

Jack P. gave it an8:
It is not a perfect film, although it is an excellent, and (pun intended) nobel one. The cast is terrific, and the story is very good. It never slows down for anything, and delightfully makes room for both comedy and thriller.

George A. gave it a10:
Its deliberately "over-the-top"....in this light it is entertaining! Great car/mall action!

Chad S. gave it a4:
There's an intruder in the house. Unless he's psychic, the intruder should be waiting outside his girlfriend's place. How does he know that Barkley(Brian Greenberg) has the instincts of a twelve-year-old boy and returns home? Since the Nobel Prize laureate's son is late for his ride to the airport, it's a bit of a plot contrivance that this cannibal expert doesn't meet up with mom and dad at the airline terminal, hopefully before they board the plane and go to Sweden without him. Evidently, the screenwriter wanted Brian to be kidnapped at home, so he goes home, instead of using a cellular phone to find out where they are. So Brian is kidnapped, while kidnapped, he learns that his father(Alan Rickman) is a bigger d*** than he previously thought. And overreacts; Barkley joins forces with Thaddeus(Shawn Hatosy) and collects half of the ransom money(shades of Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"). Unlike the two brothers in the Lumet film, however, Brian is an academic, not a "loser" like the Ethan Hawke and Phillip Seymour Hoffman characters; his foray in crime, again, seems like a plot contrivance, because it's psychologically unmotivated. And then there's the drop-off point for the ransom money, a mall of all places, teeming with people, a place where so many things could go wrong. The scheme with the two cars took a whole lot of panache to pull off, but it's hopelessly convoluted, bordering on the nonsensical. "Nobel Son" is a series of plot twists interspersed with an unconvincing family drama. If your main character is writing his master's thesis on cannibalism, and he doesn't eat his father in the end: Why bother?