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:
39
(26 sources)
39
(26 sources)
-
70
Variety
Although occasionally both overwritten and overly symbolic, tale carries a satisfying emotional charge. Read Full Review » -
70
Film Threat
World Traveler did seem completely aimless for the first third. However, once I comprehended where Freundlich was going with this, I began to really enjoy where the film was taking me. Read Full Review » -
60
Chicago Reader
Crudup takes a riskier path: his architect isn't very nice and is possibly irredeemable. His performance is subtle, complicated, and fresh, and it's a shame the movie doesn't live up to it. Read Full Review » -
60
Washington Post
Well-made, well-acted but ultimately enervating, this is a respectable effort from Freundlich. Read Full Review » -
50
Entertainment Weekly
Crudup is the best navigator a road movie like World Traveler can have, but even he can't single-handedly transport these goods from nowhere to somewhere. Read Full Review » -
50
-
50
LA Weekly
The gorgeous Crudup is talented, but this charming asshole (more asshole than charming) is old hat for him, little more than another of the blank-eyed-loser-on-a-spiritual-quest roles in which he's been trafficking lately. Read Full Review » -
50
The New Yorker
The Crudup of "Almost Famous" was both hairier and more appealing than the tortured womanizer of World Traveler. Couldn't Cal have just stayed home, grown a mustache, and called his dad on the phone? [22 & 29 April 2002, p. 209] Read Full Review » -
50
Philadelphia Inquirer
Iridescent as each of the actors is, the result is like a handful of beads without the connecting string. Read Full Review » -
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
As beautiful to look at and as emotionally disconnected as its central character. Read Full Review » -
50
Los Angeles Times
The film is perhaps best enjoyed as a minor work with some major pluses, notably in the characterizations and in their adroit portrayals. Read Full Review » -
50
Boston Globe
The real seduction Crudup pulls off is that he makes it seem possible that the character hasn't actually done all of these awful things. Read Full Review » -
50
Chicago Sun-Times
There are moments of sudden truth in the film; Freundlich, who also made "The Myth of Fingerprints" (1997), about an almost heroically depressed family at Thanksgiving, can create and write characters, even if he doesn't always know where to take them. Read Full Review » -
42
-
40
New Times (L.A.)
Loses significant points for its lazy story and complacent delivery. Read Full Review » -
40
Village Voice
The movie's single brilliant invention -- Julianne Moore as a used, contentious, profoundly odd floozy on her own magical mystery tour. Read Full Review » -
40
The Onion (A.V. Club)
A hopelessly stolid and distant evocation of Bob Rafelson's "Five Easy Pieces." Read Full Review » -
40
The New York Times
Neither the screenplay nor the film's visual vocabulary begins to evoke a charged spiritual tension between the protagonist and the world. Read Full Review » -
40
TV Guide
Freundlich's postmodern road movie contains several sharply observed scenes but doesn't really add up to much. Read Full Review » -
38
Miami Herald
Crudup is about as effective as anyone could be in the dreary World Traveler, but he can't keep this shallow, pretentious film from wallowing in banality and staggering self-indulgence. Read Full Review » -
38
ReelViews
A huge disappointment -- the kind of motion picture that makes you actively angry at the filmmaker for subjecting you to it and stealing two hours of your life. Read Full Review » -
38
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38
New York Daily News
Crudup gives it his best, but his character is so economically drawn, there's hardly anything there -- certainly nothing likable. Read Full Review » -
25
-
20
Salon.com
It's hard to remember a movie that has asked us to care, without giving us reason to, about a character who is so thoroughly and relentlessly a prick. Read Full Review » -
20
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