The Master Reviews
Observer [UK]
After an hour, I was baffled. After two, I was bored stiff.
Examiner.com
"The Master" merely ends up being a reminder that performances can take a film pretty far, but they can't make up for poor writing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Slant Magazine
The Master is Paul Thomas Anderson with the edges sanded off, the best bits shorn down to nubs.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
L.A. Weekly
What seems revelatory in the moment is often obvious in retrospect.
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Anderson's style is clearly epic in scope, but his narrative approach is ambiguous, opaque and chillingly detached.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Birmingham Mail
This is ( ... ) for cinephiles. You are expected to love it, but it sometimes left me scratching my head.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top Critic"The Master" is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
MovieWeb
Anderson's filmmaking skills are tremendous, but he suffers here under his own conceit.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Doddle
As Hoffman's Master strives to impress w/eloquent language, fine suits and psychic parlor tricks, serving as cerebral misdirection, so too does Anderson, similarly pulling elaborate wool over our eyes. Quoting Ms. Stein: There is no there there.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/10
honeycuttshollywood.com
A hollow epic that searches for a big bang yet ends in a whimper.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4
amNewYork
This movie defies the usual fresh-or-rotten dichotomy. It's an awesome feat of filmmaking, but so opaque that it keeps you at a remove and proves hard to sit through.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
tonymacklin.net
Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master baits the audience. One may admire The Master for its scope, style, and maybe some of the acting, but its vision is myopic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.0/5
EntertainmentTell
Great performances and visuals, but painfully slow and not much happens. Not Anderson's best work
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Uncut Magazine [UK]
This is more character study than story. Yet, it feels as shallow as The Cause itself, as maddeningly opaque as Dodd's motivations.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
Sacramento News & Review
... an attractively wrapped but thick and indigestible slab of baloney.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
ColeSmithey.com
As with Lou Reed's notorious album of over-modulated feedback ("Metal Machine Music"), the audience is left to decide if the movie is some kind of bad joke, or an artistic project gone horribly astray.
Full Review
| Original Score: D
Aiming for epic, it's undeniably thought-provoking, but too ambiguous to fully satisfy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
WaffleMovies.com
Get ready for the first big, vaunted, art house movie heavily lauded as a masterpiece and Oscar contender that will leave you wondering what all the hype was about.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5
The problem with The Master is that it doesn't extend or expand Anderson's artistic journey.
A film that starts off seeming like the best of 2012 becomes a chore to sit through, and I suspect that few, even among this film's enthusiasts, will come to the end of the movie wishing there were more.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
