W.E. Reviews
Top CriticWith "W.E." Madonna gorges on glamour, architectural porn and haute couture but starves the mind.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The film is stylishly shot. And, in weaving the stories of Wally and Wallis, Madonna trusts viewers to move from mood to mood, era to era without overexplanation, the way music-video editing long ago trained us to.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
A movie more concerned with how things look than how they feel.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The production is nice looking, and telling the Edward-and-Wallis story from her side is an interesting idea, but it's one that Madonna simply can't pull off here.
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| Original Score: 2/5
A movie that's less about people than the fetishistic obsession with style.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
"W.E." is not awful. It looks quite nice at times, and Riseborough delivers an exquisite if overdrawn performance as Wallis.
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| Original Score: C+
As a director, Madonna has flair without ability, but she does have flair.
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| Original Score: 1/4
"W.E." is a mess, but it's certainly an attractive one; the characters are underdeveloped, yet so relentlessly art- directed that at least there's always something lovely to look at.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Madonna the director deserves a script better than the one Madonna the screenwriter handed off to her.
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| Original Score: 2/4
[It] tries awfully hard. In the end it tries our patience.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Madonna as a director has no discernible idea of how to locate a tone, or a provocative blend of tones. Her camera makes circles around its subjects every chance it gets in ways that evoke - nothing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
"W.E." is an elegant, ambitious and relentlessly monotonous film.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The question that needs to be asked about Madonna's "W.E." is why?
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
For Madonna, what better symbol than a vanity mirror for her vanity project - both are stylish and both reflect nothing more than their own emptiness.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
I found the movie fascinating. Except for the boring bits.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The disparate strands of the two stories never make much sense the way they're braided together.
Instead of a film about a love that conquered a king and nearly undid a kingdom, Madonna has come up with a female friendship movie, which would be fine if she weren't busy trying to prove her art-film bona fides.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
The director's apparent blindness to the epic banality of her subjects suggests that the whole project is one royally misguided mess.
Director Madonna's tenacity deserves praise, unlike anything else in this torturously torpid costume drama, except the costumes which gleam with period elegance.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Madonna's second shot at directing is a definite step up from her first, 2008's "Filth and Wisdom." Unfortunately, that's faint praise at best.
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| Original Score: 2/5
W.E. is a glorious mess of a disappointing costume drama, which shows all the directing restraint of a kid with a new box of paints and not much more focus.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Has all the credibility of a fan stamping her feet and insisting her idol be understood.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Certainly, W.E. is the work of a woman who apparently hasn't spent time with normal human beings in a while.
What on earth is the point of a Madonna product, in any medium, if it contains not a single orgy?
The movie is a folly, a desultory vanity project for its director and co-writer.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Riseborough's acting offers total commitment in the face of lunacy, but it's a shame she's flapping around in a film with such a terrible script and warped sense of purpose.
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| Original Score: 2/5
It would be one thing if W.E. were strictly a swooning counterpoint to Speech's scowling dismissal of Wallis and Edward's relationship, an embellishment of an already notorious romance rather than a twice-lathered soap opera.
No matter her audacity, the Material Girl is only as good as her material, and Madonna has only half a movie here.
"W.E.," Madonna's second go at directing a feature film, leaves one wishing she'd find other creative outlets for those times when she's bored with the pop-star life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
You can't call "W.E." a total disaster; it's too pretty, too nonsensical and finally too insignificant for that.
Burdened with risible dialogue and weak performances, pic doesn't have much going for it apart from lavish production design and terrific, well-researched costumes.
Madonna's second foray into directing is pleasing to the eyes and ears, but lacking anything for the soul.
