Alan Jones Radio Times Jun 7, 2024 5/5

The fact that it manages to carry its open-mouthed audience through every awesomely enigmatic turn is its greatest accomplishment.

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Chuck Klosterman Akron Beacon Journal Oct 30, 2023 4/4

It sometimes seems like there is more legitimate creativity in [Malkovich] than there's been in almost every other movie released this year. The script is completely insane and consistently brilliant, and it's funny on almost every level imaginable.

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Sean Axmaker Stream on Demand Apr 8, 2023

... a devastatingly funny portrait of unhappiness, desperation, desire, and the vicious things we do for love...

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Tom Meek Cambridge Day Sep 10, 2020 2.5/4

The very meta tale stars and is about thespian and sometime Cambridge resident John Malkovich and the puppeteer (John Cusack) who discovers a portal into his brain.

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Leigh Paatsch Herald Sun (Australia) Jun 9, 2020 4/5

The intense invention and creativity at work in this extraordinary movie is overwhelming.

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Adam Kempenaar Filmspotting Aug 30, 2019 4.5/5

Kaufman and Jonze steer us through a truly twisted psychological and existential swamp.

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Rob Aldam Backseat Mafia Aug 9, 2019

Outlandish, hilarious and exceedingly clever.

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Armond White New York Press Apr 30, 2019

For two hours, it works like the best music videos: making high-concept philosophies graspable, marvelous and fun.

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Kaleem Aftab The List Apr 13, 2019 5/5

What could have developed into a one-gag film becomes a gender-bending extravaganza with a crazy network of love triangles... The real magic of Being John Malkovich is that it never fails to surprise.

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Lindsay Zoladz The Ringer Mar 26, 2019

Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's hallucinatory meditation on human embodiment, celebrity, and, uh, John Malkovich remains the ultimate marriage of '90s music-video aesthetics and absurdist narrative storytelling.

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Rob Harvilla The Ringer Mar 25, 2019

Accept that even Jonze and Kaufman will most likely never provide a worthy substitute to Being John Malkovich themselves. It's awfully hard, even 20 years later, to find a movie even half as bizarre that was also even half as successful.

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David Germain Associated Press Jun 12, 2018

Fabulously funny and delightfully disturbed, "Being John Malkovich'' is the ultimate voyeur movie, a dark and at times malevolent take on what it's like to be in someone else's skull, looking out.

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Chris Chang Film Comment Magazine Mar 22, 2018

The beauty of the film is the way it elevates John Malkovich from an actor to an axiom.

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Gilbert Adair Independent on Sunday Nov 27, 2017

It's a film, indeed, of such jaw-dropping originality that its flaws -- and it definitely has some -- count for far less than they otherwise would.

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Candice Frederick Reel Talk Online Sep 11, 2017 B+

Though Being John Malkovich was deliciously original and delivers an underrated performance by John Cusack, the ending was a bit disappointing.

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Brian Gibson Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Alberta) Feb 7, 2014

There's something fantastically proto-Internet about this romantic-dramedy of flop-sweat desperation, role-playing, simulation and eccentric, niche-culture behaviour-a world of virtual-reality escapes, alter egos, sexual fetishes and rabbit-hole trips.

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Walter Chaw Film Freak Central Jun 25, 2012 4/4

an essential existentialist text.

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Matt Brunson Creative Loafing Jun 14, 2012 4/4

Playing by its own rules every step of the way, Being John Malkovich is clearly the sort of movie that needs to be made more often.

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Keith Staskiewicz Entertainment Weekly May 12, 2012 A

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