For four hours this moody, glossy pantomime leadenly plods on, saying much more about the hubris and excess of old-time Hollywood thinking than the burnished glories of an ancient world.
Comment
05/05/08
Cleopatra (1963)
45 %
Reviews Counted: 20 Fresh: 9 Rotten:11 Average Rating: 5.4/10
Runtime: 4 hrs 8 mins
Synopsis: This epic, spectacular love story of Egyptian queen Cleopatra and the Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Marc Antony has dazzled audiences with its elaborate sets, daring costumes, and thrilling sea battle since its release, but these can't compare with Elizabeth Taylor as the mesmerizing... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, Pamela Brown
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Screenwriter: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Ranald MacDougall, Sidney Buchman
Producer: Walter Wanger
Composer: Alex North
Screenwriter: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Ranald MacDougall, Sidney Buchman
Producer: Walter Wanger
Composer: Alex North
Reviews
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Top Critic
A giant of a movie that is sometimes lumbering, but ever watchable thanks to its uninhibited ambition, size and glamour.
05/05/08
Top Critic
Harrison, doing his waspish don act as Caesar, alone rises above mediocrity.
02/09/06
Top Critic
This is not a film -- it's a deal, decorated with extensive publicity, but weighed down by listless direction and lots of nasal talk, talk, talk.
05/05/08
Cleopatra is not only a supercolossal eye-filler (the unprecedented budget shows in the physical opulence throughout), but it is also a remarkably literate cinematic recreation of an historic epoch.
09/05/07
Top Critic
It is a surpassing entertainment, one of the great epic films of our day.
05/09/05
Top Critic
Taylor, Burton, and Harrison are sublime in this sweeping epic of love and nations.
03/10/03
The movie is also dotted with some battle sequences of nearly epic proportions, but they can’t make up for Cleopatra’s shortcomings in plot and acting.
01/20/03
A giant white elephant of a movie, a bloated monument to hubris and excess.
05/16/01
amazing that 20th Century Fox survived this train wreck long enough to produce Star Wars some 14 years later
04/26/01
A moderately successful, generally entertaining, but overly ambitious movie.
04/11/01
...not required viewing by any means, nor is it the bomb it is sometimes made out to be...
03/21/01
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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Cleopatra
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