64
Metascore
37 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80The TelegraphRobbie CollinThe TelegraphRobbie CollinCafé Society isn’t Vonnie’s story, but it’s Stewart’s film.
- 80Screen DailyJonathan RomneyScreen DailyJonathan RomneyA bittersweet comedy of manners that sees Allen pushing the boat out stylistically and in narrative ambition, even as he treads familiar ground.
- 75The PlaylistJessica KiangThe PlaylistJessica KiangWhat little shock of the new the film can provide us with comes from the honeyed cinematography by Vittorio Storaro which uses silhouettes, graphic compositions and glowing closeups in an often genuinely breathtaking manner. But it also comes from the performances.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyWispy and familiar in its themes and humorous strokes, Café Society benefits from an exceptionally adept cast led by Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Steve Carell, as well as from a luminous glow that emphasizes both the old Hollywood nostalgia and the story’s basis in dreams and artifice.
- 60The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawWoody Allen’s Café Society is a sweet, sad, insubstantial jeu d’ésprit, watchable, charming and beautifully shot by Vittorio Storaro – yet always freighted by a pedantic nostalgia for the 1930s golden age in both Hollywood and New York, nostalgia which the title itself rather coercively announces.
- 60VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanThe movie, watchable as it is, never quite overcomes the sense that it’s a lavish diagram working hard to come off as a real movie.
- 60CineVueJohn BleasdaleCineVueJohn BleasdaleEisenberg avoids, for the most part, doing a Woody Allen impersonation, but his bumbling guilelessness is wearing and Stewart seems out of place, unable to ever quite get over being Kristen Stewart in a Woody Allen movie. In fact, both young leads seem nervous to have been invited and often appear simply pleased to be there.
- 58The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaThe Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaCafé Society is a quintessential later-period Woody Allen film. That is to say, it’s utterly mediocre.