Metropolitan 1990

Critics score:
91 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Whit Stillman's crafty independent feature about wealthy Park Avenue teenagers and a middle-class boy who joins their ranks over one Christmas vacation is certainly well imagined, and impressively acted by a cast of newcomers. Read more

Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: Metropolitan has always felt like a movie that exists in a strange, insular little bubble of its own, utterly divorced from the personal experience of virtually anyone who watches it. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: Stillman hasn't made as hermetically appealing a movie since, but for those lamenting the absence of the written word in modern comedy - rather than the improvisationally blurted-out kind - "Metropolitan" makes for delightful memory-lane viewing. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Stillman films these rounds of romance and jealousy, old mind-sets and new friendships, as scintillating dialectical jousts in which verbal blows take the place of action and leave lasting emotional wounds. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Not very much happens in Metropolitan, and yet everything that happens is felt deeply, because the characters in this movie are still too young to have perfected their defenses against life. Read more

Jessica Winter, Time Out: None of Stillman's endearing characters quite fits their prescribed social context, and in its exhilarated final movement, Metropolitan finds an exit out of the stifling UHB salon. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: Filmmaker Whit Stillman makes a strikingly original debut with Metropolitan, a glib, ironic portrait of the vulnerable young heirs to Manhattan's disappearing debutante scene. Read more

Sam Weisberg, Village Voice: It might make you long for a return to movies in which teens have a greater vocabulary than their parents. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: True appreciation for this movie may be restricted to those with firsthand experience in this kind of world, or a certain upper-haute stamina. Read more

Rita Kempley, Washington Post: Like chamber music, Metropolitan is sprightly, intimate and all too self-aware. Read more