11%
31%
76%
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 164
Fresh: 118 | Rotten: 46
It isn't as compelling on the screen as it was on the stage, but Carnage makes up for its flaws with Polanski's smooth direction and assured performances from Winslet and Foster.
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Critic Reviews: 40
Fresh: 21 | Rotten: 19
It isn't as compelling on the screen as it was on the stage, but Carnage makes up for its flaws with Polanski's smooth direction and assured performances from Winslet and Foster.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 14,388
Keep track of your movies and discover movies with friends by adding Rotten Tomatoes to your Facebook Timeline.
Carnage is a razor sharp, biting comedy centered on parental differences. After two boys duke it out on a playground, the parents of the "victim" invite the parents of the "bully" over to work out their issues. A polite discussion of childrearing soon escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents revealing their true colors. None of them will escape the carnage. -- (C) Sony Pictures Classics
Dec 16, 2011 Limited
Mar 20, 2012
$2.5M
Sony Pictures Classics
All Critics (164) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (118) | Rotten (46) | DVD (2)
Where previously we felt as trapped in Polanski's apartments as his characters, in Carnage we only ever peek in through the window.
The actors seem to have fun, particularly Foster, working against type as the thoroughly unlikable Penelope. But "Carnage" isn't nearly as bloody as it thinks it is.
What are supposed to be transgressive observations about the holy state of parenthood and matrimony instead come across as self-satisfied and shallow as the pieties Reza intends to puncture.
In real life, hyper-controlling metropolitan parents would not waste this much time on people they loathe.
The astonishing Waltz steals the picture, possibly because he's the one with a rational perspective (despite his telephonic obsessiveness): He sees the whole exercise as pointless. Ultimately, so do we.
Foster is particularly impressive in a stridently unattractive role, as the pinched, angry liberal who's orchestrated the meeting but doesn't get quite the apology she wants.
Carnage is neatly directly, sharply scripted and outstandingly performed drama. It's voyeuristic, it's relevant and it's hilarious.
A delightfully uncivilised car-crash of a meeting.
I thought the highlight of the film was after the guests eat Foster's homemade fruit cobbler, Winslet vomits over hubby and Foster's precious coffee table books.
Carnage is ... more of a curiosity than a major experience - but it's fun and funny, and sometimes that's enough.
Parents and married couples, especially, will get a lot out of the biting commentary in Carnage. Not a cinematic triumph but a good way to flex the frontal lobe of your brain for a bit.
Each character seems to be rushing through their arguments and it's as if every single word has been over thought.
The only thing worse than watching good actors turn in bad performances is witnessing a good director go with the motions, which is exactly what Polanski does here.
Although the play isn't quite as successful or penetrating on screen, it works as an entertainingly vicious doubles tennis match between two pairs of terrific actors.
Polanski hasn't had this much fun in years and neither, by the looks of things, has his cast. A wickedly dark delight.
The screenplay develops beautifully as layer after layer of civilised behaviour is pared back. The awkward interaction of parents about their boys switches gear to become a hostile interaction of couples about their inner demons and relationship struggles
It's fascinating, confronting and often extremely funny in the way only real life situations can be
Foster and Winslet have to endure total mental breakdowns and disintegrate their characters' closely guarded personas. Although it hardly needs to be said at this point in their decorated careers, they're fantastic.
full review at Movies for the Masses
The characters' all-round unpleasantness, and the film's merciless mirth-making with their failings, keeps things buoyantly, bleakly funny.
The work of a master, this wickedly funny film is beautifully orchestrated and controlled.
It's ghastly but utterly riveting. Reza is merciless in her dissection of social hypocrisy and she finds a ruthlessly efficient accomplice in Polanski.
A short and trifling thing.
The film is well able to make us think exactly how we might have behaved in similar circumstances.
It's an acting tour-de-force, the tension heightened by the claustrophobic setting...
Roman Polanski's sharp, short and stagily-shot adaptation of the Olivier Award-winning play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza.
A dialogue-driven bash in the face of parenthood and the facade of interacting with other parents, especially when it is due to a dispute that leaves one couple's son physically injured after the other couple's boy attacks him, which leads to a verbal session in a nice New York apartment. While obviously more fit for
May 24, 2012Super Reviewer
Darkly funny, scathing indictment of what passes for "normal" or "responsible" parenting in our society. Obvious when watching that it was first a play, but it's not to the film's detriment; one room, four actors, and one central problem to resolve: which child should be blamed for a playground fight that left one of
November 27, 2011Super Reviewer
| 29% | The Vow |
| 94% | Mission: Impossible Ghost Protoc... |
| 28% | Underworld Awakening |
| 85% | Chronicle |
| 65% | The Woman in Black |
| 11% | Gone |
| 31% | Man on a Ledge |
| 76% | We Need to Talk About Kevin |
| 82% | Goon |
| 93% | Coriolanus |
Snow White Isn't the Fairest of All
The Biggest Movies of 2012!
Memorable Big-Screen Fairy Tales
First Reviews for Prometheus
2
0
0
6
2
1
0
Top Critic
