Critic Reviews
72
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
20(83%)
mixed
3(13%)
negative
1(4%)
Showing 24 Critic Reviews
May 18, 2015
100
It is a masterpiece of black-comic bad taste and a positive carnival of transgression. The secret is the deadpan seriousness with which everything is treated.
Apr 21, 2016
90
Tale of Tales is the most faithful and creatively rendered fairytale onscreen to date, bizarrely satisfying and totally worth a patient, focused viewing.
Jun 2, 2016
88
Despite the fabulism of Tale of Tales, it remains rooted in contemporary issues. Prince Charming does not figure much in this film, but women do.
May 18, 2015
83
A slightly bumpy two hours of storytelling, but it's peppered with wonder and unexpected humor.
May 18, 2015
80
With starkly enigmatic, but beautifully wrought and filigree imagery, with a dark cutting humour which is bleak rather than ironic, Garrone is not interested in touching our hearts or giving us a comfortable moral.
May 18, 2015
80
Tale of Tales combines the wildly imaginative world of kings, queens and ogres with the kind of lush production values for which Italian cinema was once famous. The result is a dreamy, fresh take on the kind of dark and gory yarns that have come down to us from the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, only here they're pleasingly new and unfamiliar.
May 18, 2015
80
Garrone’s new film reminds us that traditional fables don’t need injections of contemporary relevance to grip, stir and disturb us.
May 18, 2015
80
Tale of Tales dances on a razor’s edge between funny and unnerving, with sequences of shadow-spun horror rubbing up against moments of searing baroque beauty. The result is a fabulously sexy, defiantly unfashionable readymade cult item.
May 18, 2015
80
Tale of Tales might lack magic in the immediate, flashy sense, but its strange spell is altogether seductive and special.
May 5, 2016
80
Even if its stumbles a bit with its less-than-satisfying conclusion, the blend of humor, horror and grotesque whimsy on display throughout Tale of Tales combine to create what often feels like some sort of grown-up, far darker cousin to "The Princess Bride."
