75
Metascore
14 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumWhile the young people chatter about life and literature with sometimes overbearing self-satisfaction, the astute filmmaker observes their pretentious gum-flapping with a mixture of amusement, compassion, and wised-up rue.
- 90VarietyLisa NesselsonVarietyLisa NesselsonA movie so unrepentantly French that viewers who enjoy truly Gallic pics can start (tastefully) salivating now.
- 80SalonAndrew O'HehirSalonAndrew O'HehirBourdieu's cast is terrific throughout. Any fellow academic brats out there will especially appreciate Jacques Bonnaffé, one of the greatest French comic actors, in an imperious turn as the severe, guru-like professor.
- 80Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanNot for nothing did this movie open the International Critics' Week (and win its grand prize) last year at Cannes; Poison Friends may be all talk, but it's cut like an action flick.
- 75Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerChristian Science MonitorPeter RainerFour university students band together under the obnoxious mentorship of Andre (Thibault Vinçon), who is meant to be brilliant but, to me at least, seemed all too obviously a poseur. His betrayal of his friends deepens the movie.
- 75TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghTV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghThis sly, subtle and very French psychological drama dissects the relationship between three insecure Sorbonne students and their deeply flawed idol.
- 75New York PostKyle SmithNew York PostKyle SmithPoison Friends deftly sketches the fine line - is there one? - between "critic" and "loser."
- 75New York Daily NewsJack MathewsNew York Daily NewsJack MathewsIf, unlike his friends, you don't take anything Andre says seriously, there is a wicked sense of fun about it, and you may even see a little of yourself in one of the characters.
- 70The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottAs a group portrait of apprentice intellectuals the film has an almost documentary accuracy. It also has a degree of energy, an appetite for strong feelings and big ideas, notably missing in American movies about the young and overeducated, which tend to specialize in mumbled ironies and tiny epiphanies.
- 60The New RepublicStanley KauffmannThe New RepublicStanley KauffmannIt is kept listenable--and watchable--because Bourdieu uses his knowledge of these people with winning ease. The story's conclusion verges on the grim, and it underscores Bourdieu's presumable theme: student life and talk are the last real vacations in many lives.