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Critics Consensus: Demolition benefits from a stellar cast, even if their solid work isn't always enough to prop up a confused story that aims for profundity but too often settles for clichés.
Critic Consensus: Demolition benefits from a stellar cast, even if their solid work isn't always enough to prop up a confused story that aims for profundity but too often settles for clichés.
All Critics (199) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (104) | Rotten (95)
There's a beauty in the breakdown, and it's amongst the rubble that Davis finds himself living, rather than enduring, his life.
There is much to savor here, especially the unforced performance of Judah Lewis -- one more recruit to the terrific roster of younger actors who are streaming into the movies. Yet the film lacks the courage of its affliction.
Thank god for Jake Gyllenhaal. Absent his performance, Demolition would have been a more unbearable slog than it is.
Director Jean-Marc Vallée doesn't seem to mind when his movies become sun-dappled insta-redemption stories so long as there's a bravura central turn holding it all down.
The best I can say is that it's another tour de force for Gyllenhaal, although his intensity isn't matched by the movie itself.
The deadpan and sometimes excruciating discomfort on display, played for laughs, calls to mind the early, emotionally subversive films of David O. Russell.
For all the emotional weight supposedly put into DEMOLITION, it's impossible for the story to be put into context of reality.
A hymn to the fragility of an upper middle class male ego.
Demolition shines due to Jake Gyllenhaal's stellar performance of a man demolishing his way through grief.
It is a role that requires an actor that does more than what is on the page. Something that Gyllenhaal accomplishes spectacularly.
In a movie about a man who tries to find a way back into the life he's emotionally left, there is no sense of gravitas or proper character development.
Demolition's cast and comedic and emotional performances makes it a watchable film though it is as unfocused and scatterbrained as its central character.
A harrowing and complex guide to how the mind copes with trauma. The story goes through the motions of loss and finding yourself in a slowly paced and painfully uneventful series of events. Ultimately it fails to deliver any real compelling narrative.
Super Reviewer
Donnie gets Darkor!
Despite Gyllenhaal's praiseworthy performance, this is an unremarkable film that will hardly be remembered in the future as one of Vallée's finest works. Full review on filmotrope. com
Is it possible to create a story that captivates our hearts without a single likable character? I suppose, but Demolition doesn't even come remotely close. Davis' all-encompassing indifference corresponds to our apathy for him. He is an insufferable individual. Smug and self satisfied, it's impossible to feel any sadness for a man so emotionally vacant. Particularly late in the chronicle when he is physically demolishing the value of his extravagant home, first by taking a mallet to it and then a bulldozer. Whee! It's fun to destroy things. The screenplay by Bryan Sipe (The Choice) never delves into what makes Davis tick. As a result we have no clearer understanding as to what this guy's problem is at the end, than we were at the beginning. That doesn't prevent this wasted cinematic exercise from giving us a neat little happy conclusion that unexpectedly materializes out of the heavens. It conveniently ignores the very foundation of Davis' personality. The contrived ending is the insincere kiss on the lips after a 101 minute beating. fastfilmreviews.com
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