California Split Reviews
Cinemania
The Odd Couple of poker films
Full Review
| Original Score: 76/100
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Funny as hell.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
CinePassion
Nothing enhances Altman's visual-aural density like the bustle of poker circles, race tracks, boxing rings
Top CriticSold as a comedy, the film scans more like American-century Dostoyevsky, with comp cocktails.
Robert Altman's masterful 1974 study of the psychology of the compulsive gambler.
TV Guide's Movie Guide
A film such as this, which is essentially a series of comic vignettes without a plot, depends upon its performances, and both Gould and Segal are in top form.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The film is technically and physically handsome, all the more so for being mostly location work, but lacks a cohesive and reinforced sense of story direction.
culturevulture.net
...the big thing holding back American movies is that they aren't more like California Split.
Slant Magazine
Adding emphasis on the homo-ness of their lucrative bond are the repeated instances where the interference of women breaks both their concentration and their hot streaks.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Altman feels rather than thinks his way into a subject, with a special interest in how people relate to one another in moments of crisis.
A fascinating, vivid movie, not quite comparable to any other movie that I can immediately think of. Nor is it easily categorized.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Film4
he two actors' inventive, improvized banter is a treat, and they are ably supported by Prentiss and Welles, both given room and encouragement to make their mark by the director.
What Altman comes up with is sometimes almost a documentary feel; at the end of California Split we know something about organized gambling in this country we didn't know before.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
