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Critics Consensus: Grand Piano is so tense in its best moments -- and appealingly strange overall -- that it remains rewarding in spite of its flaws.
Critic Consensus: Grand Piano is so tense in its best moments -- and appealingly strange overall -- that it remains rewarding in spite of its flaws.
All Critics (68) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (54) | Rotten (14)
Director Eugenio Mira manages to keep Grand Piano visually stimulating even when writer Damien Chazelle's script gets silly.
It's a crazy if occasionally engaging mess.
Preposterous, but much anxious fun.
"Grand Piano" is an ambitious effort that plays dumb.
Not all the right notes are hit in "Grand Piano," but for an elegantly schizoid B movie, it's more B-sharp than B-flat.
"Grand Piano" is a tidy and tension-filled exercise in terror that takes stage fright to literal extremes.
The effective mix of old and new that courses through the film's entire bloodstream is evident from its opening title sequence, a bold and elegant fetishization of a piano that makes its outer contours sexy and its interior strings appear sharp.
Gimmicky and melodramatic, the plot to Grand Piano surprisingly pulls off an entertaining flick.
A tense, suspense-filled thriller with an element of the underdog about it.
... Grand Piano is a movie that puts style over substance to great effect.
There is little point going into the motives of the man calling the shots in Damien Chazelle's script as they are ridiculous and ill-conceived.
Excessive in its simplicity, yet simplistic in its excess, 'Grand Piano' is a sharp thriller that knows exactly what it is and what it wants to do -- like any good concert, the goal is to entertain, and it succeeds fairly well.
The premise (piano player is forced to flawlessly play a ridiculously difficult piece in front of live audience - or get shot) is pretty cool. Of course it also creates a problem for the film: build the tension with lots of music and images, or explain it to pieces. Sadly, it's the latter here. The film is still entertaining and doesn't drag out the premise over more than 80 minutes, but it's also a little silly, at times. When you accept it's little more than a B-movie, you can enjoy it enough, but maybe the idea could have even been something huge, given the right creators.
Super Reviewer
Tense enough and with some good moments here and there, this thriller manages to entertain despite (or because of) its heavy-handed direction and a ludicrous plot whose greatest problems include a villain whose motives are ridiculous and a lame third act where little makes sense.
A spectacular thriller worthy of the works of Alfred Hitchcock. A hugely entertaining cat and mouse thriller that has your spellbound. It's a thrilling tour de force. An instant classic. An extremely well-made, sharply written and dazzlingly performed film. A virtuoso piece of riveting work by Director, Eugenio Mira. An absorbing and claustrophobic mind-grabber. An utterly compelling and truly chilling edge of your seat ride. It grabs you at the start and refuses to let go even at the end. Elijah Wood gives a mature, gripping and sensational performance. It's great to see Wood in an adult role such as this and he nails it. John Cusack is brilliantly menacing, he is barely seen but he leaves a chilling impact with his performance.
Play or Die. Good Film! Grand Piano can easily be described as Phone Booth in a concert with some speed thrown in for good measure. It goes for the enclosed race against time plot line to deliver its thrills and it succeeds somewhat thanks to a game Elijah Wood and some good direction. It's a solid thriller and contains some very nice cinematography and set design, however, the end was not satisfying enough. It left too many questions open. It was meant to be left open, yet didn't come across that well. Overall, it's a competent movie. There's enough thrills to make it entertaining, but it lacks real suspense and a strong ending to match the premise. Moments before his comeback performance, a concert pianist who suffers from stage fright discovers a note written on his music sheet.
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