The reviews for House of Gucci have finally come in, and they appear almost as conflicted as the Gucci family themselves. However, the one thing most critics agree on is that Lady Gaga's performance is something to behold.
Directed by Ridley Scott, House of Gucci is a biographical crime drama concerning Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), her eventually ex-husband Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), and the family behind the Gucci luxury fashion house. And, of course, a very high-profile murder.
House of Gucci's trailers might have made one expect a camp, highly dramatic and over-the-top film, however the reality seems to be slightly more moderate. Reviewers noted House of Gucci never quite pushes itself into being unapologetically camp, but also doesn't let itself be completely grounded and serious, leaving it awkwardly straddling the two. Many also agreed that the film noticeably drags in its second half, with Forbes' Scott Mendelson calling its last third "an epilogue stretched out to 45 minutes."
However, Gaga's scenery-chewing performance has been commended as "magnetic," and in some ways the saving grace of House of Gucci. And while the star-studded cast including Driver, Jared Leto, and Al Pacino may sometimes feel as though they're all acting in different films, the spectacle of everyone revelling in their outsized performances is enough to at least make House of Gucci entertaining.Here's what critics have to say about House of Gucci:
Katie Rife from A.V. Club writes:
[Y]ou’d have to squint pretty hard to see a howling high-camp romp in House Of Gucci. Instead, what we get is a fact-based family melodrama, and a rather meandering one at that...
Alex Godfrey from Empire writes:
[House of Gucci] is not interested in subtlety. Everything that happens is out-sized, and pretty much every performance is huge...
Leah Greenblatt from Entertainment Weekly writes:
Ridley Scott is not a man built for minimalism: His House does pretty much everything to the max, a chaotic bellissimo romp of a movie so stuffed with oversized characters and telenovela twists that it feels less like a biopic than a duty-free Dynasty…
Scott Mendelson from Forbes writes:
[I]s the movie any good? Alas, no… [It] is a long and lumbering 2.5-hour movie that details most of the most interesting story elements and character beats in its first hour.
Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian writes:
Ridley Scott’s fantastically rackety, messy soap opera about the fall of the house of Gucci is rescued from pure silliness by Lady Gaga’s glorious performance as Patrizia Reggiani, the enraged ex-wife of Maurizio Gucci, grandson of the fashion-house founder Guccio Gucci. She singlehandedly delivers the movie from any issues about Italianface casting: only she can get away with speaking English with the comedy foreign-a accent-a...
Tara Bennett from IGN writes:
[T]he director lets the whole affair get so self-serious and Lifetime-movie-overwrought by its meandering end that I was left wishing for the better film that’s buried in there somewhere...
David Ehrlich from IndieWire writes:
House of Gucci is best enjoyed as a movie about the blood-feud over its tone. Locked in a heated conversation with its own campiness from the moment it starts, House of Gucci leverages that underlying conflict into an operatic portrait of the tension between wealth and value.
Mae Abdulbaki from ScreenRant writes:
Lady Gaga's performance as Patrizia is by far one of the best things about House of Gucci, ridiculous enough without going over the top… However, one of the biggest letdowns of the film is how little is understood about her overall perspective. The screenplay could have used a lot more polishing with regards to what drives Patrizia besides money and power…
Owen Gleiberman from Variety writes:
House of Gucci is an icepick docudrama that has a great deal of fun with its grand roster of ambitious scoundrels, but it’s never less than a straight-faced and nimbly accomplished movie…
House of Gucci arrives in theatres Nov. 24.
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