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Critics Consensus: A so-so documentary about a fascinating personality, Salinger has moments of insight but is too often bogged down by reenactments and a lack of attention to the man's actual writings.
Critic Consensus: A so-so documentary about a fascinating personality, Salinger has moments of insight but is too often bogged down by reenactments and a lack of attention to the man's actual writings.
All Critics (87) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (56)
Salinger triumphs, though, as an absorbing portrait of a singular man of mystery.
Too bad that Salinger offers no real insight into the elusive writer and is fueled almost entirely by trivial anecdotes.
The movie has a shallow, paparazzo literalism. It just wants to catch the legendarily reclusive Salinger getting into a Jeep.
What emerges is a portrait of an enigma.
Where Salinger succeeds is in the gripping section on World War II, and in the exquisite, often melancholy details in the stories told by the likes of Joyce Maynard.
The treatment of J.D. Salinger's writing in this overwrought documentary is so inflated and pompous it comes as a relief when Judd Apatow shows up to describe The Catcher in the Rye as a funny book filled with great lines.
Beyond its disturbing aspersions cast on mental illness, the film tells a story that is inherently flawed by the absence of its own key player.
In total, Salinger might be an excellent documentary to watch if you want to know more about author J.D. Salinger, but the only way to truly know him may be to assume that everything he wrote was autobiography.
Many reviewers have made the obvious joke that Holden Caulfield would've hated Salinger because it's so phony-and he would have, and it is.
Salinger would scoff at it.
For those captivated by Salinger's writing, this intelligent and often invigorating film provides fine insight into his world.
An emotionally stirring and affecting work, albeit a flawed one.
For any fan of Holden Caulfield this interesting work explores the fetid earth from which he arose, along with some antidotal commentary from celebs who're fans just like you. You won't find out why he isolated from society, but if you are a fan then indeed you already know and can thusly enjoy watching celebs and others NOT KNOW, even after claiming to've loved Catcher.
Super Reviewer
It's not often that I see a documentary that isn't very good, but it's unheard of for a documentary to be so completely at odds with the message it tries to impart! A film that in turn idolizes Salinger in an almost creepy fashion and would have him rolling in his grave, "Salinger" is a phony mess, filled with manipulative music and swooping camera angles of what appears to be stock footage. Yet it is thorough in tracing his career, isn't afraid to question the man, and does end up imparting some interesting food for thought. Unfortunately, even if the documentary was not pretentious, and ultimately a commercial for books that Salinger may or may not actually have given permission to publish, it simply isn't well-made. Your average History Channel doc, or in other words, frustratingly disappointing.
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