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Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Topsy-Turvy
EMAILPRINTUSA Films / October Films

Universal acclaim
Based on 31 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 12 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Mike Leigh
Directed by: Mike Leigh
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 17, 1999
DVD: June 13, 2000
Running Time: 160 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
RATING: R for scene of risque nudity
Starring Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Lesley Manville, Timothy Spall, Alison Steadman, Dexter Fletcher, and Eleanor David
When their latest play fails and they threaten to disband, Gilbert and Sullivan are inspired to create their masterpiece, "The Mikado."
Also On Metacritic
FILM: All or Nothing Secrets & Lies Vera Drake
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database
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...
USA Today Mike Clark
One of the year's best movies and certainly its most delightful screen surprise.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Topsy-Turvy reminds us that, in any age, creative expression is at once the most personal and most communal of enterprises.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Brilliantly acted, sumptuously filmed, and overflowing with mellifluous music.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
A tribute to anyone who ever picked up a score, a pen, a paintbrush or a grease pencil - or a movie camera.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
A masterful film about the magic of performance and the foibles of the artists behind it.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Some movies delight you. Some stimulate and provoke. Some enlighten and inform. And some simply hand you a rousing good time-- does all of that and more.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham
Part of the appeal of Topsy-Turvy is its generosity about human folly and shortcomings. Its wistfulness is very touching.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It's as full a movie as you can imagine -- exhausting and exhilarating and continually fascinating.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The year's most beguilling and touching surprise. Bravo.
Washington Post Desson Thomson
A 160 minute work of sustained brilliance and delicacy.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Janet Maslin
One of those films that create a mix of erudition, pageantry and delectable acting opportunities, much as "Shakespeare in Love."
Read Full Review >Variety Deborah Young
This beautifully crafted and lively romp around the 1880s stage world should enjoy its longest life as a vid classic.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Not only Mike Leigh's strongest film since "Naked" but a true show-making epic.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
A monument to process -- to the minutiae of making art -- Topsy-Turvy leaves you upside down and breathless.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Thoroughly researched, unobtrusively upholstered, this beautifully assured entertainment about Victorian England is a string of delights.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly F. X. Feeney
We never seem to be looking at actors, but at people; never at scenes, but at life unrehearsed.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Filled with delicious backstage drama, and superb actors reveling in the opportunity to play their 19th-century counterparts.
Read Full Review >Film.com Ernest Hardy
Leigh and his solid cast make sure that inside jokes translate to a broad audience, and that their rendering of the back-stage drama is smart, engrossing and often very funny.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Wildly entertaining, "Shakespeare in Love" minus the Bard and the babe, but with substantive style to burn.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris
Mike Leigh's great big, superbly performed homage to the creative process.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
A joyous, amazingly detailed paean to imagination and personal expression that dares -- and succeeds -- to illustrate one of the most mysterious enigmas of all: the creative process.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Revels in the sensual pleasure of music while capturing brilliantly the tension that grips any theater company before the curtain goes up.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
At 160 minutes, it's a bit long and uneventful for anyone who is not at least a moderate fan of the musicals.
Read Full Review >Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson
Topsy-Turvy is flawless, borne along by a savagely witty screenplay that Leigh directs like the gears of a clock.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
A bit longer than it might be, a bit more attached to its digressions than we might wish. But the length does encourage the feeling that we've been through the whole creative process with Gilbert and Sullivan .
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
A loving, gently funny and slightly claustrophobic tribute to theatrical life.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Jay Carr
In the end, it's the snatches of music, mangled as it is, and the mechanics of staging it, in the absence of Leigh's usual raw, urgent psychic collisions, that keep Topsy-Turvy from seeming merely a gorgeous wax museum.
Read Full Review >TNT RoughCut Don Kaye
But there's so much more of the very, very British Topsy-Turvy that just seems so stuffy and inert.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Excellent! A film that will stand watching again and again!
Cheryl C. gave it a10:
What an extraordinary evocation of an era, the theater and the creative process generally. A thoroughly enjoyable, wonderfully well done production!
J. Martinez gave it a 10:
Topsy Turvy is a pretty good movie. The first time I saw it, true I did think it was a little boring, but after I saw it a second time I started getting all the underline themes, symbolism, and politically incorrectness of that time period, that I didn't see the first time around. Plus the music was sung beautifully.
Yoon C. gave it a 10:
Mike Leigh's best film and all the more welcome for not being another kitchen sink working class drama in which Britons have cornered the market. Richly textured, somber and intelligent, celebratory but cautiously and keenly insightful into the workings of a priveleged society stuffily defined by class. At its best, one of the best portrayals of the interaction of art, cultures, commerce, egos, chance, and myriad other factors that miraculously come together to produce what we call grand entertainment. Has none of the cheapshots or populist panderings of, say, Amadeus. A triumph, one of the greatest films ever.
Sabrina D. gave it a 2:
I thought this movie was quite boring and stupid.
Kim S. gave it a 10:
Beautiful -detail, costumes, artistic verisimilitude.....
Charles D. gave it a 10:
The best movie I've ever seen about the process of making musical theater.
