Critic Reviews
27
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
positive
3(11%)
mixed
7(26%)
negative
17(63%)
Showing 27 Critic Reviews
All Reviews
All Reviews
Metascore
Metascore
88
For all its polish, Bonfire of the Vanities neither sustains the feverish, revolutionary energy nor reaches the visceral peak of Hi, Mom! But as major Hollywood pictures go, it can become stunningly hot-tempered, a quality most journalists are too quick to ignore.
63
The beauty of the Wolfe book was the way it saw through its time and place, dissecting motives and reading minds. The movie sees much, but it doesn't see through.
63
If you loved Wolfe's book, you may very well hate the movie. If you simply liked the novel, you may be simultaneously entertained and disappointed by what De Palma and Cristofer have done to it. If you don't know the book, you may find the movie mildly enjoyable, while wondering what all the fuss is about. [21 Dec 1990, p.3]
50
What De Palma delivers is merely a mediocre yuppy nightmare movie, stylistically flashy but with little pace, bite or pathos.
50
What's off about this latest De Palma work is that the movie can't be taken seriously. The characters are straight out of a comic strip and proceed through some cartoon-like situations. And so, viewed in this way, it becomes an enjoyable romp. [17 Dec 1990]
50
These are the rules: When watching The Bonfire of the Vanities, you don't think of Tom Wolfe. You think of Dr. Strangelove. Only then will you embrace what little there is to like in this sprawling, seemingly racist, absurdist-revisionist twist on The Bonfire of the Vanities. [21 Dec 1990, p.20]
42
The Bonfire Of The Vanities gets a lot of things right but they're largely negated by the colossal things it gets wrong.
42
Even as they've smoothed the novel's rough edges, moreover, the filmmakers have tried to cram a maximum number of its incidents into about two hours of screen time. This gives the picture a hectic pace that adds to its feeling of weightlessness and unreality. Poor casting, especially in the major roles played by Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffith, doesn't help.
40
A spectacular misfire from a director who should have known better.
40
As an evening out: Its many faults notwithstanding, Bonfire does have at least one thing going for it. The movie is a mess, but, like Wise Guys, it's a lively mess.
