Harold and Maude
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: December 20, 1971 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
4
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
The movie is a paean to outsiders and reckless love. Read full review
90
The TelegraphRupert Christiansen
Mawkishness is kept at bay by the lightness of touch in Ashby's direction and Gordon and Cort's wonderful performances. Only the most miserable cynic could resist its unique charm and ultimate hopefulness. Read full review
80
The GuardianJane Graham
It's to director Hal Ashby's credit that he succeeds in maintaining an unsettling tone of pre-Lynchian absurdism throughout, while also pulling the viewer into a touching love story between perhaps the most unlikely couple in cinema history. Read full review
80
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
In the end, Harold And Maude metes out these life lessons directly and without much ambiguity, yet that does little to diminish its power. Read full review
80
IGNStaff (Not Credited)
You may find yourself passing a very enjoyable couple of hours with the oddest of odd couples.  Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
This is a doggedly eccentric film which some will reject out of hand. Others will find it profoundly moving and life affirming. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineJordan Cronk
The effortless depiction of their growing camaraderie and unconscious courtship is one of Harold and Maude‘s great charms, as Ashby and screenwriter Colin Higgins transpose fading ideology into boundless truth across a modest framework of pitch-black exposition and glowingly pastoral aesthetic touches. Read full review
70
The New YorkerPauline Kael
The message is not very different from that of Hello, Dolly! or Mame, but Harold's flaccid asexuality (he's like a sickly infant, a limp, earthbound Peter Pan) and Maude's advanced stage of pixiness give that message a special freaky quality. And the film has been made with considerable wit and skill.
60
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
Ashby forever treads the thin line between whimsy and absurdity and tough sentimentality and black comedy. It is most successful when it keeps to the tone of an insane fairystory set up at the beginning of the movie. Read full review
60
CineVueCraig Williams
There’s a dark streak of comic absurdity running throughout Harold and Maude that serves a dual purpose; it gives the film its unique, heightened tone, but it also conversely grounds the more whimsical element by hinting at a greater darkness beyond the events portrayed within. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
Hal Ashby's 1972 cult film may be simpleminded, but it's fairly inoffensive, at least until Ashby lingers over the concentration-camp serial number tattooed on Gordon's arm. Some things are beyond the reach of whimsy. Read full review
50
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Director Hal Ashby’s second feature is marked by a few good gags, but marred by a greater preponderance of sophomoric, overdone and mocking humor. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Harold is death, Maude life, and they manage to make the two seem so similar that life's hardly worth the extra bother. The visual style makes everyone look fresh from the Wax Museum, and all the movie lacks is a lot of day-old gardenias and lilies and roses in the lobby, filling the place with a cloying sweet smell. Read full review
30
The New York TimesVincent Canby
As performers, they both are so aggressive, so creepy and off‐putting, that Harold and Maude are obviously made for each other, a point the movie itself refuses to recognize with a twist ending that betrays, I think, its life‐affirming pre tensions. Read full review
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