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.
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