57
Metascore
30 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanMoverman balances the potential for staginess with his flowing cinematic bravura; he keeps surprising you, and he gives the drama a dash of poison elegance.
- 83The PlaylistJessica KiangThe PlaylistJessica KiangThis is a film that glories in juxtaposition, as exchanges of bestial ferocity hiss back and forth in an excruciatingly elegant destination restaurant, and as poisonously feral barbs are traded across a table laden with elaborately effete hors d’oeuvres.
- 68TheWrapBen CrollTheWrapBen CrollAt once a darkly comic social satire, a pitch-black moral thriller and an earnest plea to recognize mental illness, The Dinner is a seven-layer dip overflowing with compelling individual ingredients that, when mixed together, make the finished dish awfully difficult to digest.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijThe Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijA high-carat cast...tears into the juicy material with relish for the most part, but by trying to keep the prolonged sit-down affair from becoming excessively stagey, Moverman adds too many distracting flashbacks to maintain the original’s hard-hitting and well-aimed gut punch.
- 60The TelegraphTim RobeyThe TelegraphTim RobeyThese characters get ghastly fast. It’s the pace and panic of modernity Moverman grasps best as morally corrosive forces: the soft ping of iPhone email alerts never letting us be, and consciences wiped clean as quickly as the next news cycle whips around.
- 60We Got This CoveredLauren Humphries-BrooksWe Got This CoveredLauren Humphries-BrooksAn imperfect but fascinating film, The Dinner's stellar cast delivers a deeply troubling and psychologically complex treatment of class and family.
- 50Screen DailyLee MarshallScreen DailyLee MarshallIn Moverman’s hands, it becomes a contemporary American fable about savagery lurking behind civilised facades, about class and racial divisions in a country that calls itself united, and about ethical vacuums in a connected, online society. It’s also an unbalanced, uneven ride, a distracting hot and cold shower of intense scenes featuring four terrific actors and long, meandering passages of flashback filler.
- 42The Film StageRory O'ConnorThe Film StageRory O'ConnorYou get the sense that Moverman may just have bitten off a little more than he can chew.
- 20The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThe sclerotic staginess of The Dinner means this is one to miss.