Toni Erdmann
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 25, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
93
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 36 Critics
Positive:
35
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Total FilmJamie GrahamFeb 6, 2017
Strikingly original, brilliantly acted, this serio-comic masterpiece constantly swerves expectations. Read full review
100
EmpireIan FreerFeb 6, 2017
Set in the unpromising world of German business consultancy, Toni Erdmann is a low-key triumph, especially for writer-director Maren Ade and star Sandra Hüller. A weird, thoughtful, affecting treat. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniJan 26, 2017
An immensely rich, deeply felt exploration of human relationships that draws you in and holds you fast for nearly three hours. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 26, 2017
It has found a considerable, gratefully discombobulated audience all around the world, and it deserves one here. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 29, 2016
Brilliantly funny and moving comedy. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSusan WloszczynaDec 26, 2016
[Maren Ade] fully embraces the inherent awkwardness of a testy emotional bond and tackles it to the ground, all the while mining it for heartfelt humor without the all-too-common safety net of predictability found in big-budget Hollywood fare. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 22, 2016
Toni Erdmann, proceeding in a perfectly straightforward manner, from one awkward, heartfelt, hilarious scene to the next, wraps itself around some of the thorniest complexities of contemporary reality. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 22, 2016
Ade has an unusual gift for planting more than one idea in each frame; I don’t think there’s a single one of the movie’s 162 minutes that can be reduced to a single emotional beat or narrative function. That hefty running time isn’t a sign of indulgence, but integrity. Read full review
100
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonDec 21, 2016
Delving into microeconomics and macroaggressions, Toni Erdmann, the dynamite, superbly acted third feature from writer-director Maren Ade, is social studies at its finest. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloDec 20, 2016
This is a high-concept comedy that’s firmly, almost defiantly rooted in the real world, among fully three-dimensional human beings whose behavior doesn’t conform to a rigid template. There’s nothing else like it in theaters right now. Brace yourself for the emotional whirlwind, and go. Read full review
100
Consequence of SoundNico LangOct 11, 2016
What makes Toni Erdmann, the finest comedy in recent memory, so wonderful and beguiling is the deep undercurrent of sadness that informs its eventual life lessons. Read full review
100
We Got This CoveredJosh CabritaSep 19, 2016
With a perfect balance of heart and humor, Toni Erdmann transcends its clichéd premise, becoming one of the most tragic comedies of the decade so far. Read full review
100
Time Out LondonDave CalhounSep 1, 2016
The film’s no-nonsense, visually plain documentary-style of shooting feels utterly appropriate to its sly evocation of the absurdities and banalities of modern life. Just brilliant. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 19, 2016
According to the most basic laws of cinema, Toni Erdmann, Maren Ade’s third feature as a writer-director (she has five times that many credits as a producer), shouldn’t work. It’s practically one long string of nesting, oxymoronic self-cancelling paradoxes: here is the world’s first genuinely funny, 162-minute German comedy of embarrassment. Read full review
100
Screen InternationalLee MarshallMay 19, 2016
Surprising, awkward, refreshing and, at times, downright hilarious, German director Maren Ade’s dazzlingly original follow-up to her 2009 Berlinale Silver Bear winner Everyone Else is that rarest of things: a nearly three-hour-long German-Austrian arthouse comedy-drama that (almost) never drags. Read full review
100
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 19, 2016
The film takes precisely as much time as it needs for its muddled, maddeningly human characters, played with extraordinary courage and invention by Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller, to find their way into each other, and so into themselves. Read full review
100
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaMay 19, 2016
Toni Erdmann is one of the most stirring cinematic experiences to come around in a long time. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 19, 2016
The film’s sweetness and bitterness are held so perfectly in balance, and realised with such sinew-stiffening intensity, that watching it feels like a three-hour sports massage for your heart and soul. Read full review
95
TheWrapDave WhiteDec 23, 2016
Toni Erdmann is a thoroughly confident and impeccably executed comedy of oddball family functionality. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 19, 2016
Every family is its own country with culture and customs and embarrassments that seem alien beyond its borders, but the genius of Maren Ade‘s brilliantly funny and slyly crushing Toni Erdmann is that it makes the utterly foreign nation of its central father/daughter relationship feel so much like home. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 26, 2017
Maren Ade's film, an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film, is almost painful to watch at times, but it's also funny and touching and reflective of the world, all courtesy of Ade and terrific performances by Peter Simonischek as a goofy father who refuses to act his age and Sandra Hüller as his daughter, as buttoned-up as her dad isn't. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekDec 23, 2016
To say Toni Erdmann is funny doesn’t even begin to capture the out-there texture of the jokes, and of the actors’ timing. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 21, 2016
The German comedy Toni Erdmann makes the best case imaginable for the importance of tone. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovFeb 15, 2017
This pleasantly rambling absurdist father/daughter drama is also one of the most strikingly unusual films of the year, period. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonFeb 16, 2017
The film is perhaps best appreciated as a showcase for the gifted Simonischek, whose portrayal of Winfried/Toni is one for the ages. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrFeb 16, 2017
It’s the classic modern dynamic of lefty parent and tightly-wound yuppie spawn, but Toni Erdmann takes it out of sitcom territory and into something longer, richer, weirder, and ultimately a great deal more affecting. Read full review
88
Washington PostAnn HornadayJan 26, 2017
Toni Erdmann, it turns out, is Hüller’s movie all the way, with her character not just matching wits with the bumptious, often irritating father, but ultimately coming into her own with the genuine feeling he seems determined to deflect. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 27, 2016
If you're looking for the best and most beguiling foreign-language film of the year, you'll find it in Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann, a German father-daughter story that will leave you laughing and choking back tears, often simultaneously. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayOct 3, 2016
By its end, Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann is a work of laser-guided social critique and a comedy. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnMay 19, 2016
the film isn't always successful at justifying its heft, repeating the central father-daughter tension innumerable times before the pair finally start to make some progress. It's only thanks to the two actors' extraordinary authenticity that the film continues to work as long as it does. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 19, 2016
The film is very funny – but asks its audience to wonder if being funny, if wanting to make people laugh, and particularly if using comedy for family-bonding, really is the sign of being relaxed and life-affirming in the way people who are talented at comedy often assume. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorJan 26, 2017
As director Maren Ade builds one extended set piece after another, you will gradually spy her brilliant fusion of form and function: the languid pacing reproduces in the audience the feeling of Ines’s excruciating discomfort and desire to see her father shuffle out of the scene. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoJan 19, 2017
That the movie works so well is also due to the exceptional talents of leads Simonischek and Hüller, who hold nothing back — especially the former, whose Winfried is one of the oddest ducks in recent movies. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 6, 2017
It’s all fitfully sharp and amusing but hardly a masterpiece. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 23, 2017
Hollywood will simplify it to that big concept, and trim writer-director Maren Ade’s flaccid storytelling and many aimless scenes into something tighter, funnier and almost certainly less German. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 19, 2016
There are numerous delights for the patient and the two leads give prize-worthy performances but at just under three hours this is one drawn-out gag that almost outstays its welcome. Read full review
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