Quartet Reviews
Irish Times
The whole project feels just a little patronising towards the older demographic. Aren't they quaint? Aren't they naughty? Aren't they cheeky?
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Slant Magazine
For a movie that aims to make four artists' last spotlit hurrah a revel-worthy moment, Quartet shouldn't urge the viewer to welcome the closing of the curtain.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Las Vegas Weekly
It's so low-key that it's soporific.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Top CriticIt has a good heart. I'll give it that. Maybe what it needs is more exotic marigolds.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
"Quartet" is polite enough to be short, I'll give it that much.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Times-Picayune
Though sweet of demeanor, Dustin Hoffman's directoral debut is purely lightweight stuff, built around a flimsy plot and obvious choices every step of the way.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
honeycuttshollywood.com
Much talent and lovely performances are lavished on a creaky, disingenuous story ostensibly about old age
Full Review
| Original Score: 5
amNewYork
No movie starring these actors could possibly be all that bad. But Quartet is tepid when it wants to be sophisticated, a slow-moving, middlebrow endeavor.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
House Next Door
Hoffman, of all people, should have respect enough for Smith to give her something meatier to chew on.
Financial Times
Even Merchant Ivory, purveyors of cinematic porcelain to the gentry, would have hesitated over this particular tea set.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Little White Lies
A scattering of small, lovely moments, but hardly setting the screen alight, especially with its cop-out ending.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
RedEye
Unlike the devastating portrait of aging in Michael Haneke's Amour, Quartet favors cheeky over honest.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Shockya.com
Unfolds with a respectable, well-heeled polish, seeming to believe that its admittedly wonderful cast lends it an automatic sophistication which inoculates it against charges of tedium.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Always cute and breezy, "Quartet" often forgets that its protagonists are in a sobering stage of life, and that there's comedy to be found there as well.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Like many actors-turned-filmmakers, first-time director Dustin Hoffman (yes, that Dustin Hoffman) indulges his performers above all else ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Coasts on the charm of its performers, the gloss of the visuals (the cinematography by John de Borman keeps us alert to Hedsor House's loveliness) and the genteel fantasy of its oh-so-civilized setting.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Film Threat
The point isn't that Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut suffers in comparison with other films about old age, such as Amour. The point is that it's so spectacularly silly and sentimental, it simply suffers in comparison with other films.
