The Fall 2006

Critics score:
59 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Some filmmakers can imagine everything and select nothing, and while it's clear as a bell Tarsem has more talent than almost any 10 directors put together, in The Fall he's basically showing off with every new wondrous image. Read more

Nathan Lee, New York Times: Shot piecemeal over the course of four years on locations in 18 countries, The Fall is a genuine labor of love -- and a real bore. Read more

Bill Stamets, Chicago Reader: The girl and the hospital patients and staff also turn up in his improvised adventure, extravagantly garbed by costume designer Eiko Ishioka. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Pace and Untaru generate an unforced chemistry that makes them pleasant company for a couple of hours, but they almost work against the movie's need to establish narrative tension. They appear to be having such a good time that Roy's self-destructive impu Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: It's the most glorious, wonderful mess put onscreen since Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Read more

Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times: For a film that wants to present itself as extravagantly dazzling, there is something thuddingly familiar and bland in its vision. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: A bewitching movie, rich in ideas and humanity, and it reminds us that fiction is real to the one who imagines it. Adults might read with detachment, but kids know the truth: It matters who lives and who dies in a story. It matters for them, and for us. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Some of the set pieces are ravishing, more often they're ravishingly clunky. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: The Fall may indeed stumble at times, and it's certainly hard to categorize. But it's also exhilarating in reach and vision while admirable in execution. If only more films aspired to such wonder. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: Read more

Mark Bourne, Film.com: ...a movie that not only expected me to pay attention, it assumed that I could. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: This is a feast for the eyes and a famine for the brain. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: That's the trouble with candy, the eye kind or the tooth-decaying variety. It's only after you've made a glutton of yourself that you realize you haven't devoured anything particularly filling. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Dazzling and delirious, The Fall is a celebration of cinema, of old-fashioned storytelling and globe-hopping spectacle. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Sometimes, looking good isn't enough. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Tarsem's The Fall is a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms. Surely it is one of the wildest indulgences a director has ever granted himself. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: An achingly beautiful movie and a triumph of location scouting, with more cosmopolitan spectacle than the past three Indiana Jones and James Bond movies combined. Read more

Kathie Smith, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The Fall is a technically dazzling film that instantly gratifies the eye, but falls short of appeasing the head or the heart with its visual excesses. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: The pacing drags and the cliched tussle between childhood innocence and adult disillusionment can only go one way. Better to experience it than think about it, fair to say. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The Fall is aptly named not only because it pertains to a tragic descent but because viewers will feel as if they have plunged headlong into an alternate universe with this dazzling adult fairy tale. Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: This convoluted, arbitrary, overlong whimsy will strike most grown-ups as childish, and is far too violent and pretentious for kids. Read more

Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: If the human details are often problematic, the IMAX-grade bombast, ceremonial camera, and Jodorowsky-esque eclecticism still combine for a singular spectacle. Read more