Frida 2002

Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News: Compelling, adult, sexy and fiercely stylized. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Frida is intended to spread the word that Kahlo, a surrealist of surpassing self-investigation, was a firebrand and a legend. So why tell her story like a runny soap opera? Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: No matter what happens to Hayek from this point on, she leaves us Frida. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: If Frida doesn't tell us anything that we don't already know, it does dramatize Kahlo's life with a fiery, soulful beauty. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: Frida is a film that celebrates but never sugarcoats the hard but exciting life of a brave artist. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: It's enough to make you scurry off to find a book about Frida Kahlo -- which is, perhaps, the ultimate compliment for a film biography. Read more

Susan Stark, Detroit News: Passionate, provocative, hilarious, tragic and just dizzyingly beautiful to behold. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: A movie that seizes you up, catches fire and dances. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: The further it strays from sober naturalism, the better Frida is. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: [Hayek] doesn't just act Frida, she inhabits her. Read more

Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times: Meticulously mounted, exasperatingly well-behaved film, which ticks off Kahlo's lifetime milestones with the dutiful precision of a tax accountant. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: As a kind of colorful, dramatized PBS program, Frida gets the job done. But, for that, why not watch a documentary? Read more

Steven Rosen, Denver Post: [The screenplay's] flatness ultimately defeats a film that's always a treat to look at. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: A revolutionary life has rarely felt less edgy, or the biography of an iconoclast more bourgeois. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: A biopic of an artist that actually looks artistic. Read more

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: Like the artists it celebrates, Frida is audacious and haunting. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: There's something oddly moving about the film purely as a love story between two people who were more alike than was good for them, yet somehow stuck it out. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Frida is certainly no disaster, but neither is it the Kahlo movie Frida fans have been looking for. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Read more

David Edelstein, NPR's Fresh Air: Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: The greatest movie about an artist since Vincente Minnelli grafted the psychological turmoil of Vincent Van Gogh onto the screen in Lust for Life. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Ms. Taymor gets magnificent performances from Ms. Hayek as Frida and Alfred Molina as the oversexed Diego Rivera. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: It's just disappointingly superficial -- a movie that has all the elements necessary to be a fascinating, involving character study, but never does more than scratch the surface. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Sometimes we feel as if the film careens from one colorful event to another without respite, but sometimes it must have seemed to Frida Kahlo as if her life did, too. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Taymor's movie version of Kahlo's life, Frida, makes the artist seem more like a human being and less like a craft-fair novelty than she has in years. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: A domestic melodrama with weak dialogue and biopic cliches. Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The movie should more properly have been called Frida And Diego, but there's no denying Hayek's incendiary performance, which Taymor fires up with surrealistic flourishes straight out of Kahlo's dreams and nightmares. Read more

Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: This is undoubtedly the strongest performance of [Hayek's] career, and her passion for the project is palpable. Read more

Deborah Young, Variety: Bringing a fiery warmth and accessibility to the central role, [Hayek] proves a good match for the artist as she depicts Kahlo's indomitable will to live, love and paint. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The impressionist model might have served Taymor better than her Frida's straightforward script, which is ultimately overwhelmed with incident and suggests the labor of many hands. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: Endlessly interesting. Read more