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:
80
(38 sources)
80
(38 sources)
-
100
USA Today
It's hard to imagine how a film built around one-on-one interviews could be entertaining, but Frost/Nixon could not be more enthralling. Read Full Review » -
100
TV Guide
The craftsmanship, acting, and history lesson all make it among the most satisfying films of Ron Howard's career. Read Full Review » -
100
Premiere
A totally mesmerizing battle of the wills between the occasionally charming yet wily Nixon and the increasingly desperate Frost. Read Full Review » -
100
Chicago Sun-Times
Frank Langella and Michael Sheen do not attempt to mimic their characters, but to embody them. Read Full Review » -
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Morgan finds the right elements of action and character through which to make history leap off the page. Read Full Review » -
100
Charlotte Observer
Langella has always been a cerebral actor, one who never gives away all he's thinking. What comes through in this portrayal is how smart Nixon was, whether he's cunningly probing Frost's weaknesses or pitching himself to TV viewers as an avuncular, misunderstood Cold Warrior. Read Full Review » -
91
The Onion (A.V. Club)
In a masterful performance, Langella highlights Nixon's oily charm and guile. Read Full Review » -
91
Entertainment Weekly
Surges with an energy and visual verve that improve the play and enhance the themes of dramatist Peter Morgan's script. Read Full Review » -
90
Los Angeles Times
The result is involving, engrossing cinema -- more thrilling, in fact, than Howard's "The Da Vinci Code" -- filmmaking of a type rarely seen anymore and sorely missed. Read Full Review » -
90
Wall Street Journal
What Ron Howard gets, to a degree that's astonishing in a two-hour film, is the density and complexity, as well as the generous entertainment quotient, of Peter Morgan's screenplay. Read Full Review » -
88
Rolling Stone
Director Ron Howard has turned Peter Morgan's stage success into a grabber of a movie laced with tension, stinging wit and potent human drama. Read Full Review » -
88
ReelViews
Howard and Morgan have transformed this story into something more than an embellished re-telling of recent history. They have shaped a tragedy that is almost Shakespearean in force. Read Full Review » -
88
New York Post
Sheen, who is also reprising his stage role and appeared as Tony Blair in the Morgan-written "The Queen," is highly effective as Frost - though the stakes for Frost are nowhere near as interesting as those for Nixon. Read Full Review » -
88
Baltimore Sun
Ron Howard has made his best movie with Frost/Nixon, an electric political drama with a skin-prickling immediacy. Read Full Review » -
83
Portland Oregonian
The result is a totally absorbing and entertaining film, one of the best historical dramas from Hollywood in many years. Read Full Review » -
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Throughout, it's clouded -- for me at least -- by a nagging sense that it's straining too hard to build the media clash into more of an historic event than it was. Read Full Review » -
80
Washington Post
Neither the title nor the subject matter prepares you for the pure fun of Frost/Nixon. Read Full Review » -
80
NPR
A case is being made here that it wasn't really Frost who did Nixon in: It was Nixon's old nemesis, the TV camera. Read Full Review » -
80
Village Voice
Frost/Nixon's main attraction is neither its topicality nor its historical value, but Langella's re-creation of his Tony-winning performance. Read Full Review » -
80
Newsweek
Frost/Nixon works even better on screen. Director Ron Howard and Morgan, adapting his own play, have both opened up the tale and, with the power of close-ups, made this duel of wits even more intimate and suspenseful. Read Full Review » -
80
The New Yorker
Offers considerable insight into the Nixon mystery, without solving it; the movie is fully absorbing and even, when Nixon falls into a drunken, resentful rage, exciting, but I can't escape the feeling that it carries about it an aura of momentousness that isn't warranted by the events. Read Full Review » -
80
Salon.com
Howard has made a picture for grown-ups, a well-constructed entertainment that neither talks down to its audience nor congratulates it just for showing up. Read Full Review » -
80
Empire
Stirring stuff that works thrillingly as drama, and should make Sheen a star, even if it compromises on historical insight. Read Full Review » -
78
Austin Chronicle
Ultimately, Frost/Nixon may be stuck in time - but, oh, what a time it was. Read Full Review » -
75
-
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Frost/Nixon is not the epic gladiatorial face-off, the ricocheting verbal shoot-out that writer Morgan and filmmaker Howard imagined. Read Full Review » -
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Shakespeare would have delighted in the chapter, especially in the antagonist, but not at the expense of the longer and darker and still-unfinished book. Read Full Review » -
75
Christian Science Monitor
Never entirely escapes its theatrical origins, and, by framing the story so pugilistically, the filmmakers don't bring out the full richness in this material. Read Full Review » -
70
Time
For closeup conflict and emotional kick, the Frost/Nixon movie tops the play. But neither can match the tension and weird poignancy of the original interviews -- reality TV of the highest, queasiest order. Read Full Review » -
70
Chicago Reader
Ron Howard directed, with outstanding support from Kevin Bacon as Jack Brennan, Nixon's fierce chief of staff. Read Full Review » -
70
Slate
Morgan's compact, satisfying drama presents presidential interviewing as a gladiatorial event. Read Full Review » -
70
The New York Times
Stories of lost crowns lend themselves to drama, but not necessarily audience-pleasing entertainments, which may explain why Frost/Nixon registers as such a soothing, agreeably amusing experience, more palliative than purgative. Read Full Review » -
70
Variety
Frank Langella's meticulous performance will generate the sort of attention that will attract serious filmgoers. Read Full Review » -
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Less a political movie than a boxing film without the gloves. Read Full Review » -
63
Boston Globe
Despite a moving, canny incarnation of the man by Frank Langella, despite a slickly entertaining coffee-table production as only Ron Howard knows how, the movie feels cooked up. Read Full Review » -
60
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50
Miami Herald
Despite the great care and research that went into the movie, Frost/Nixon pales in comparison to Oliver Stone's "Nixon" when it comes to humanizing the infamous leader. Read Full Review » -
50
New York Magazine
Unsatisfying even if, like me, you're a lifelong aficionado of Nixon-bashing. Read Full Review »
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