Under the direction of Hal Ashby, in his first film since Coming Home, Sellers gives an impressively disciplined performance, always taut and under control. The difficulty with the film, however, is that the screenplay is basically a one-joke story.

| Apr 7, 2022

Gently directed by Hal Ashby, this satire of a ruling class in which nobody knows anything is almost plausible, and certainly topical.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 17, 2020

The result must be one of the boldest of commercial comedies, for the way it turns on passages of dead time, the dreadful pauses while other characters struggle to see the significance in each of Chance's cryptically meaningless remarks.

| Jan 16, 2020

A brutal look at America and Americans that gently lifts up the mirror image that television gives us of ourselves, smashes it on the marble floors of our political institutions and holds a chunk of jagged glass to our throats. And then makes us laugh.

| Apr 28, 2018

Sellers has never been better and he embellishes the detached, childlike innocence of this character with perfect style and timing. It's a deceptively simple performance, but it is essentially the core and substance of the film.

| Dec 19, 2016

Here is a comedy that valiantly defies both gravity and the latest Hollywood fashion.

| Jul 8, 2014

Ground Zero for the cult of Sellers.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 5, 2009

A placid, poignant, well-kept secret of a movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 4, 2009

A highly unusual and an unusually fine film.

| Oct 31, 2007

No one seems to know what to do with the allegorical undertone of Jerzy Kosinski's script, but as a whole this 1979 film maintains a fine level of wit, sophistication, and insight.

| Oct 31, 2007

What emerges in the end is a strange ambiguity of attitude to the American political system and a hollow humour about cultural values. The cinema of cynicism, really.

| Jan 26, 2006

Hal Ashby directs Being There at an unruffled, elegant pace, the better to let Mr. Sellers's double-edged mannerisms make their full impression upon the audience.

Full Review | May 20, 2003

Satire is a threatened species in American film, and when it does occur, it's usually broad and slapstick, as in the Mel Brooks films. Being There, directed by Hal Ashby, is a rare and subtle bird that finds its tone and stays with it.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000