Critic Reviews
92
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
positive
27(100%)
mixed
0(0%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 27 Critic Reviews
100
Robert Redford's exceptionally handsome and provocative Quiz Show manages a trick that few films even dare try -- to take a hard look at personal and public moral issues and still provide dazzling entertainment.
100
A supremely elegant and thoughtful parable.
100
Working from a superb script by Paul Attanasio, Redford has caught the way a show like Twenty-One offered a carny-barker version of the American Dream.
100
Redford has fashioned (from Paul Attanasio's brilliant screenplay) an impeccably nuanced Faustian drama which aspires to capture America's fall from grace: that point at the end of the '50s when the country first lost faith in itself.
100
In this brilliant depiction of the early years of TV and the phenomenal powers it asserted in breaking down the walls of America's living rooms and homogenizing our culture, director Robert Redford has crafted a superb piece of cracked Americana. Buena Vista will win heartfelt plaudits from mature audiences and, come awards season, will certainly increase its viewership through anticipated nominations. [9 Sept 1994]
100
Quiz Show is half-a-dozen movies, nearly all exceptional, and a lion's share assemblage of the year's top male performances. A watershed scandal revisited, it's also a riveting revenge story motivated by seething resentment. [14 Sept 1994, p.1D]
100
Robert Redford's intricately woven and brilliant movie Quiz Show paints a witty but poignant portrait of that tainted time on television, when Eisenhower's America lost its innocence. [15 Sept 1994]
100
Quiz Show, Robert Redford's strongest movie yet, has contender written all over it. Swinging from the heels, it connects solidly, powerfully and probingly with the event that triggered America's loss of postwar innocence and erosion of public trust. [16 Sept 1994, p.59]
100
As charted by a brilliantly incisive script by former lawyer and Washington Post film critic Paul Attanasio, the ethical crises of "Quiz Show" radiate from that anguished moment when Van Doren takes the bait. [16 Sept 1994, p.C3]
100
Quiz Show is one of the year's very finest films. [16 Sept 1994, p.B]
