Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 2/6 | Jan 18, 2008

Director and cowriter Laurent Tirard are clearly under the sway of Shakespeare in Love, but the talented Duris is miscast as the wily Moliere, and Moliere has none of Shakespeare's giddy charm.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 24, 2007

I can only wonder what theatre gods Molière angered during his lifetime to deserve such ragtag biographical treatment, but let's hope Molière settles the debt.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2007

An extravagant and thoroughly irresistible story of intrigue, romance, comedy and artistic inspiration.

| Aug 23, 2007

Lost in the exercise is any insight into Molière's writing or any relevance to today, making his achievements seem more frivolous -- and considerably less amusing -- than they actually were.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 17, 2007

Like the playwright's comedies, at its best Moliere shows the depths beneath the archetypes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 16, 2007

Woefully miscast as the seminal 17th-century French farceur Molière, the intense, black-maned young French movie star Romain Duris never seems more comfortable than the brief moments when he's rotting in a dank jail.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 10, 2007

In making a comedy about a writer famed for his perfectly tuned wit, the filmmakers have inspired other expectations. The result is as off-putting as biting into a confection in which the sugar has been replaced by salt.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 10, 2007

Moliere hardly matches the clever mockery of its 17th century inspiration.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 10, 2007

Through homage to Moliere's works and by the film's own example, [director] Tirard reminds us that comedy can provoke both laughter and thought.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 10, 2007

As a piece of speculative biography, the movie is unpersuasive.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 10, 2007

Director and co-writer Laurent Tirard's pleasant but tame approach to his birth-of-a-major-world-dramatist portrait has its virtues.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 9, 2007

Molière is a restful diversion, perhaps too restful, but still acceptable. And the actors go a long way toward bringing it off.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

A conventional biopic would probably elide most of this period, which was before the pioneering satirist scandalized the establishment with plays like Tartuffe, but the disarming farce Molire, to its great credit, isn't really a biopic.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 2, 2007

What's missing, alas, is a greater sense of surprise that might keep the film from feeling somewhat rote.

| Jul 27, 2007

This movie about the crucible of imagination has none of its own.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 27, 2007

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière, wrote more than 30 plays, every one of them a hundred times more witty and insightful than the movie Molière.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 27, 2007

The actors elevate what might have been fluff into a genuinely moving tale, and the action is so much fun that it doesn't even matter if you've seen Molière's plays before.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 27, 2007

Duris, so good in The Beat that My Heart Skipped, is simply marvelous here. His Molière is a complex creature of intelligence, insecurity, sincerity, obstinacy and burgeoning brilliance.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 26, 2007