Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
57
(23 sources)
57
(23 sources)
-
89
Austin Chronicle
A wholly original creation, crossed with shadows and light and the everyday madness of Savannah and its remarkable citizens. Read Full Review » -
80
Chicago Reader
Eastwood essentially uses the Lady Chablis the same way he did a few extended Charlie Parker solos in Bird--as unbridled, inventive improvisations that challenge the well-rehearsed "head" arrangements of everyone else. Read Full Review » -
80
The New Republic
Two aspects stand out. Clint Eastwood is not the first person we might think of to direct a film of leisurely pace, concerned with ghosts and a transvestite...Then there's Kevin Spacey, who grows before our eyes. [29 December 1997, p. 28] Read Full Review » -
75
-
75
Christian Science Monitor
Kevin Spacey gives a richly nuanced performance as the accused killer, and director Clint Eastwood makes the sometimes sordid story less sensationalistic than it might have seemed in less accomplished hands. Read Full Review » -
70
-
70
Washington Post
Always entertaining. But someone seems to have thrown away the metronome into the Spanish moss outside. "Midnight," which finally draws to a halt after two and a half hours, has a lot of acting, a bit of soul and no rhythm. Read Full Review » -
63
-
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Clint Eastwood's film is a determined attempt to be faithful to the book's spirit, but something ineffable is lost just by turning on the camera: Nothing we see can be as amazing as what we've imagined. Read Full Review » -
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A sputtering marathon of a movie. It starts, it stops, it sprints, it stumbles, occasionally following a straight narrative line, frequently darting off on colourful if pointless tangents, often commanding our attention yet never sparking our imagination. Read Full Review » -
60
The New York Times
Yet for all the film's hard work at capturing Savannah's spirit, there is seldom enough context to make these characters seem anything but adorably whimsical to excess. Read Full Review » -
60
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58
Entertainment Weekly
By the time Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is over, it may send more than a few viewers scurrying off to the bookstore. They'll surely want to see what all the fuss was about. Read Full Review » -
50
USA Today
Regrettably, it's the movie version of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a book still thumping its chest on the hardback best-seller list after more than three years. Read Full Review » -
50
Newsweek
The fans who have kept John Berendt's nonfiction tale on the best-seller list for more than three years may come away feeling they've seen "Perry Mason" on Valium. [1 December 1997, p.87] Read Full Review » -
50
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50
San Francisco Chronicle
Isn't an awful movie. It's got two charismatic, albeit ill-served leads in John Cusack and Kevin Spacey, and it's got a sizzling, tear-it-up performance by The Lady Chablis, who brings such good-natured sass and suggestiveness that you hunger for more whenever she's offscreen. Read Full Review » -
50
Dallas Observer
In Eastwood's hands, Berendt's characters--ranging from a narcissistic merry widow to a bon vivant who entertains in vacant mansions--register with all the subtlety of the orangutan in "Any Which Way You Can." Read Full Review » -
50
-
40
Los Angeles Times
Listless, disjointed and disconnected, this meandering two-hour, 32-minute exercise in futility will fascinate no one who doesn't have a blood relation among the cast or crew. Read Full Review » -
40
Empire
Midnight is a mildly engaging hotchpotch of disparate ideas - courtroom drama, small town expos and witchcraft-infected magicking - but a far cry from Eastwood's best. Read Full Review » -
40
TV Guide
Long, lumpy and sadly charmless, this adaptation of John Berendt's nonfiction portrait of Savannah, GA, refracted through the prism of a scandalous true-crime story, tramples all over the silkily seductive voice that makes the book so compulsively readable and eerily haunting. Read Full Review » -
20
Time
It is likely to disappoint the book's acolytes and tax the patience of newcomers. [1 December 1997, p.84] Read Full Review »
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