The screenplay takes a paint-by-numbers approach, but the director, Julie Taymor... supplies visual exuberance in the spirit of the film’s heroine.

| Dec 5, 2022

A little better than the run-of-the-mill artist picture, probably because the colorful lives of these figures have an interest that for many people exceeds the interest of their work–or at least enhances it...

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 9, 2022

Smart, willful, and perverse, this Frida is nobody's servant, and the tiny Hayek plays her with head held high. You may want to laugh now and then, but you won't look away.

| Jan 7, 2020

Salma Hayek finally ushered her dream project into production, but her impassioned lead performance lacks the necessary gravitas for the role, mistaking empty energy for wild fits of inspiration.

| Jan 7, 2020

The plodding, glumly literal screenplay holds this otherwise expressive biopic back, but it's still a colourful and entertaining watch.

| Original Score: B | Jan 6, 2020

It wasn't a bad idea to conceive of the film as an epic, complex love story between Frida and Rivera, but the passion between them is more rhetorical than palpable...Taymor and Hayak give us only the rough sketch of a wild soul.

| Nov 1, 2007

It would be nice to report that the subsequent film, with all of the talent and perseverance that has gone into seeing it to fruition, was worth the heartfelt efforts of all involved.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 19, 2003

With splendid supporting turns from the likes of Ashley Judd, Edward Norton, and Geoffrey Rush, and some terrific set pieces, Taymor brings Kahlo's art to life.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 4, 2003

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 2, 2003

While Frida is no masterpiece, it's nevertheless worth the price of admission to see Hayek master her craft.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 18, 2003

Taymor's triumph is that her film, despite its distance from us in some ways, is pertinent and enthralling.

Full Review | Dec 2, 2002

Ms. Taymor gets magnificent performances from Ms. Hayek as Frida and Alfred Molina as the oversexed Diego Rivera.

| Nov 22, 2002

Just as in Kahlo's life, Rivera is the commanding centrifugal force of Taymor's film, and remains the best reason to sit through the otherwise uneven, mildly captivating Frida.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 10, 2002

It's a competent and nicely designed biopic that for all of the director's attempts to link surrealist film imagery with Hayek's depiction of Kahlo somehow manages to be generally lackluster.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 10, 2002

Passionate, provocative, hilarious, tragic and just dizzyingly beautiful to behold.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 8, 2002

[The screenplay's] flatness ultimately defeats a film that's always a treat to look at.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 8, 2002

No matter what happens to Hayek from this point on, she leaves us Frida.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2002

Taymor, the creative mind behind Broadway's The Lion King, fills Frida with brilliant, surreal flourishes...a rich, funny and sometimes erotic film about an inspiring and influential figure in 20th-century art.

Full Review | Nov 8, 2002

The greatest movie about an artist since Vincente Minnelli grafted the psychological turmoil of Vincent Van Gogh onto the screen in Lust for Life.

| Nov 6, 2002

[Hayek] doesn't just act Frida, she inhabits her.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Nov 2, 2002