Dustin Hoffman's masterful performance as the original shock comic is an abject lesson in the price paid by those who arrive ahead of their time, even if just a little.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 5, 2024

In the traditional movie, life is transmuted into art; here the hero's routines are so unfunny that no transmutation seems to have taken place.

| Sep 26, 2023

As entertainment Lenny rates pretty high...

| May 5, 2023

[It's] a fascinating tapestry of a subculture figure with brilliant hues of his craziness, his restlessness, his wit, his warmth, his charisma. Too, the movie probes Lenny's gutsiness and offers instance after instance of his style and derring-do.

| Mar 17, 2023

Episode 39: Ma / The Souvenir / Lenny / Cabaret

| Original Score: 92/100 | Oct 4, 2021

The edition of Alan Heim - who would win his Oscar with the next Fosse film, All that Jazz (1979) - allows the comedic routines of Lenny Bruce to be contrasted with the reaction of the audience in the dark below the stage" . [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 29, 2020

A mess -- precisely because it is neither fact nor imaginative fiction. Fosse and Barry never figured out for themselves how this nothingy little comic grew into a heroic figure and, rightly or wrongly, a legend

| Jul 28, 2020

Lenny the film is fragmented because Lenny the man didn't cohere. And Dustin Hoffman plays this incoherent man with insecure, manic glee.

| Jul 1, 2020

Dustin Hoffman gives one of his best performances, and the choice to shoot the film in matted black and white is bold and beautiful.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 6, 2020

Most damaging of all... is that the film lacks a coherent potnt of view.

| Dec 10, 2019

Bob Fosse has recreated a perfect atmosphere for Lenny Bruce. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Jul 24, 2019

Few films before Lenny are so ingeniously edited, and yet because the jumpy style has become so familiar in film and television, we no longer appreciate how innovative the approach of Fosse and his film editor, Alan Heim, was.

| Sep 5, 2018

Dustin Hoffman, good as he is in the title role, is never quite permitted to put together an organic, three-dimensional character.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 29, 2018

'Lenny' is a lousy movie about a comedian but it's a great film about a toxic marriage.

| Dec 18, 2017

Valerie Perrine delivers a heartbreaking performance, one which earned her the Best Actress prize at Cannes as well as Best Supporting Actress awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 4, 2015

As helmed by Fosse and interpreted by Dustin Hoffman, Lenny is too fragmented and episodic to illuminate the controversial comedian but it's a personal, prophetic film, offering insights into the real life and death of Bob Fosse as a filmmaker.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 19, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 29, 2008

His performance may feel too Actors Studio at times, but he radiates his broad-spectrum intensity until Lenny becomes something of a Dustin Hoffman film festival in miniature.

| Apr 6, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 10, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 7, 2005