Nicholas Nickleby Reviews
There's a bevy of hiss-worthy baddies to pick up the dramatic slack, beginning with Plummer's wonderfully nefarious Uncle Ralph.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
The film is enriched by an imaginatively mixed cast of antic spirits, headed by Christopher Plummer as the subtlest and most complexly evil Uncle Ralph I've ever seen in the many film and stage adaptations of the work.
A beguiling evocation of the quality that keeps Dickens evergreen: the exuberant openness with which he expresses our most basic emotions.
Like its title character, this Nicholas Nickleby finds itself in reduced circumstances -- and, also like its hero, it remains brightly optimistic, coming through in the end.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A terrific adaptation with a delightful cast and a speedy pace that defies belief, considering its lengthy source.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
With Dickens' words and writer-director Douglas McGrath's even-toned direction, a ripping good yarn is told.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
It's just sort of there, one more adaptation of a long rambling Charles Dickens soap opera well-stocked with respected British actors playing painfully stereotypical characters.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Arizona Republic
Top Critic
It's stuffed with enough morsels to make it palatable.
| Original Score: B
If you really want a taste of this classic, rent the video of the RSC production. But if you're only looking for a charming time passer, this movie is just the thing.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
The entire movie has a truncated feeling, but what's available is lovely and lovable.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
McGrath has rendered the weighty, moving and engrossing Dickens tale into a near sitcom.
| Original Score: 2/5
Plummer steals the show without resorting to camp as Nicholas' wounded and wounding Uncle Ralph. It's a great performance and a reminder of Dickens' grandeur.
| Original Score: 3/4
Trust and deceit, generosity and meanness are fleshed out by a deft cast.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
To paraphrase a line from another Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby is too much like a fragment of an underdone potato.
It's no easy trick to resist the charms of Douglas McGrath's Nicholas Nickleby, and anyone starved for a nice hats-and-corsets literary adaptation certainly isn't up to the task.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A generous tale, told through big performances by a talented cast, presenting a range of colorful characters that only Dickens could have created.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The movie is jolly and exciting and brimming with life, and wonderfully well-acted.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
It's a Filene's Basement epic for the Masterpiece Theatre crowd.
The cinematic equivalent of a glass of warm milk to soothe overstimulated nerves.
If not every scene bears the Masterpiece Theatre seal of authenticity, the parade of vividly drawn characters is always good fun.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
McGrath's version of Nicholas Nickleby cashes in on age-old show biz wisdom of 'always leave 'em wanting more.'
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
This is too much of a trifle to be considered a great Dickens film, but it's a pure-hearted adaptation bolstered by at least a dozen wonderful performances.
As a means to bring a classic novel to the attention of a modern audience, McGrath's Nicholas Nickleby is a success.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Nathan Lane as the flamboyant theatrical impresario Crummles has never been better or more restrained on film, and Alan Cumming and Timothy Spall are a pleasure, as always.
| Original Score: 3/4
This mid-19th century tale of survival after the death of a parent is still compelling today, and its message of strength and the importance of family continues to resonate.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The director has produced a colorful, affecting collage of Dickensian moods and motifs, a movie that elicits an overwhelming desire to plunge into 900 pages of 19th-century prose.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Like the Dickens novel on which it's based, director Douglas McGrath's Nicholas Nickleby overcomes the earnest blandness of its eponymous hero with wonderful side characters.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Perhaps too much got boiled away. As it is, the plot contrivances are too obvious, if not preposterous, and the portrayal of evil seems remote for modern audiences.
