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:
77
(41 sources)
77
(41 sources)
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100
Variety
An enormously entertaining slice of biographical drama, The Aviator flies like one of Howard Hughes' record-setting speed airplanes. Read Full Review » -
100
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100
USA Today
Despite the film's sporadic lulls, both director and star are on full beam. The first and third hours of this 20th-century epic are as dazzling as big-scale movies get. Read Full Review » -
100
Chicago Tribune
Sumptuously exciting, glowing with expertise, seething with life, gorgeously designed and thrillingly articulated. Read Full Review » -
100
Baltimore Sun
If you didn't know that Martin Scorsese made The Aviator, the enthralling new adventure-biography of Howard Hughes, you might think it was the calling card of a neophyte visual genius. Read Full Review » -
100
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91
Portland Oregonian
The Aviator, though, if not prime Scorsese, is the closest thing in a long time to the old Scorsese. What a splendid year-end gift! Read Full Review » -
91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It's not his (Scorsese) best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining. Read Full Review » -
90
Film Threat
This is Scorsese’s "Schindler's List", for better and for worse (mostly the better). Read Full Review » -
90
New York Magazine
The result is an admirably bumpy ride of a biopic, a rare one that leaves you feeling not safe but bracingly unsettled. Read Full Review » -
90
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88
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88
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80
Los Angeles Times
Tainted or not, Hughes' life was a remarkable one, and, flawed or not, Scorsese's film version deserves the same accolade. Read Full Review » -
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
A frenzied, sometimes overreaching biopic that paints in bold colors on a huge canvas, the film stars a never-better Leonardo DiCaprio--as perfectly cast here as he was miscast in "Gangs." Read Full Review » -
80
The Hollywood Reporter
Scorsese has crafted a rip-roaringly gorgeous-looking, beautifully acted biographical epic. But while firing on all cylinders, there's something oddly distancing about the picture. Read Full Review » -
80
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80
Empire
DiCaprio shines, dispelling fears that he hasn’t the weight to carry such a complex, forceful role. Read Full Review » -
80
Slate
But Cate Blanchett ... ahhhh. She doesn't impersonate Katharine Hepburn, she channels her. Read Full Review » -
78
Austin Chronicle
It’s bravura, classic Hollywood filmmaking, and you like to think that Hughes himself would have viewed it, if not appreciatively, then at least with a sense of kinship. Read Full Review » -
75
Charlotte Observer
Martin Scorsese understands one character better than any other American director: the man who rises in the world to wealth or prominence without attaining what he wants most. That's why Howard Hughes is an ideal subject for this director. Read Full Review » -
75
Miami Herald
Scorsese has crafted a luxurious entertainment that goes down like a flute of sparkling, silky champagne. Read Full Review » -
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Scorsese's most accomplished, most disciplined movie since GoodFellas. His most gorgeous, too, with the peaches'n'strawberries'n'cream palette of early Technicolor films. Read Full Review » -
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Running at about three hours, The Aviator is long, and the momentum occasionally flags. The depiction of Hughes's first mental breakdown feels a little obsessive-compulsive itself. Read Full Review » -
75
San Francisco Chronicle
The Aviator has a hole in its center, and Scorsese fills it the only way he can, with spectacle. He makes The Aviator colorful and entertaining from beginning to end. There are worse things. Read Full Review » -
75
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75
Entertainment Weekly
Scorsese, I think, is so invested in making The Aviator upbeat and rousing that the movie never quite reveals, the way that "Kinsey" or "Ray" or "A Beautiful Mind" or even a good E! True Hollywood Story do, how its hero's vision and his grand torments could be flip sides of the same temperament. Read Full Review » -
75
Christian Science Monitor
Has to be called one of the year's best movies. Credit goes partly to the built-in fascination of its subject and partly to its excellent cast. Read Full Review » -
75
New York Post
The movie equivalent of a lavish coffee-table book, a love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood from one of its foremost students. Read Full Review » -
75
Boston Globe
As luscious as the filmmaking craft here is, it lacks the rude vitality, the unpredictability, the pure American craziness of the films that should have won him (Scorsese) the Oscar: "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," and "GoodFellas." Read Full Review » -
70
Chicago Reader
Lots can be said for The Aviator as entertainment, though not much for it as edification. Read Full Review » -
70
LA Weekly
A triumph of production design...As a character study, though, The Aviator is downright squeamish. Read Full Review » -
70
Time
Despite its star's heroic efforts, The Aviator is a gorgeous jet, flying on automatic pilot. Read Full Review » -
70
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70
Wall Street Journal
Watching the actors and gorgeous trappings is an adventure in cognitive dissonance. I didn't believe a single minute in almost three hours, but enjoyed being there all the same. Read Full Review » -
63
New York Daily News
A lush, panoramic, dizzyingly portrait of the many-tentacled entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Unfortunately, though it may finally gain an Oscar for director Martin Scorsese, it is not his best work. The movie is disappointingly flat. Read Full Review » -
60
The New York Times
Visually sumptuous if disappointingly hollow account of Hughes's early life. Read Full Review » -
60
Washington Post
We may enjoy watching the spectacles, but we don't much care for, or even have a feeling for, the guy in the cockpit. Read Full Review » -
60
TV Guide
Brisk, glossy and gloriously art-directed, Scorsese's lavish biopic is a pop trifle, engaging but not compelling. Read Full Review » -
60
The New Republic
This same film, shot for shot, line for line, could have been much more solid and engrossing, much farther up the Parnassian slope, with a better actor as Hughes. Read Full Review » -
50
Village Voice
The Aviator could've been a "Raging Bull" brother film, given that masterpiece's crystalline purity of purpose and humiliated courage. But it brakes far short. Read Full Review »
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