An exaggerated tone pervades, and it confuses.

| Nov 27, 2023

Destroys the form of the original alright, but it also destroys the book's themes in their entirety.

| Original Score: 0/4 | May 9, 2023

The film is totally deranged. [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 30, 2022

It's ultimately not difficult to see why The Bonfire of the Vanities was (and still is) regarded as an epic big-budget bomb...

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 10, 2016

If you're interested in a faithful visual adaptation of Wolfe's novel, be assured that this isn't it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 28, 2013

Brian DePalma lapses into idle, slapsticky digressions. You don't get angry at what he's attacking, or defensive; you just get weary.

| Jun 28, 2013

Tom Wolfe's widely read satire becomes a tedious farce, turning one of the year's most anticipated movies into one of the most disappointing.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 28, 2013

What a mess.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 28, 2013

On film, Bonfire achieves a consistency of ineptitude rare even in this era of over-inflated cinematic air bags.

| Jun 28, 2013

If you loved Wolfe's book, you may very well hate the movie. If you simply liked the novel, you may be simultaneously entertained and disappointed by what De Palma and Cristofer have done to it.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 28, 2013

Brian DePalma`s The Bonfire of the Vanities is a perfect example of how a best-selling book can be carefully altered, perceptively pruned and converted into an intriguing motion picture.

| Jun 28, 2013

Reduced to pure plot, the narrative is not so much a sendup of 1980s hypocrisy as an orgy of banal, juvenile mean-spiritedness. The irony of Wolfe's book becomes shrill, screaming sarcasm, unpleasant, and, worse, unfunny.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 28, 2013

Certainly Wolfe's canvas might lend itself to a broad approach, but broad like Dr. Strangelove, not broad like the Three Stooges.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 28, 2013

In this heavy-handed and uneven treatment, De Palma drains Tom Wolfe's original story of its humour, and must shoulder the blame for its failure.

| Jun 28, 2013

Even as they've smoothed the novel's rough edges... the filmmakers have tried to cram a maximum number of its incidents into about two hours of screen time. This gives the picture a hectic pace that adds to its feeling of weightlessness and unreality.

| Jun 28, 2013

The film was cast wrong and written shallowly.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 28, 2013

Call it Bonfire of the Calamities.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 28, 2013

One of the most indecently bad movies of the year.

| Original Score: D | Sep 7, 2011

Has more embarrassing moments than good ones.

| Original Score: C | Apr 8, 2009

Brian De Palma's take on Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities is a misfire of inanities.

| Mar 26, 2009