It took the mix of grace, sex, and slapstick energy that makes up the Lubitsch touch to create the funniest film ever made about the German invasion of Poland.

| Jul 1, 2023

The running gags, swift direction, and concise script makes it the best comedy about Fascism since Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

| May 17, 2023

The film’s high purpose propels Lubitsch to unsurpassed extremes of inventive audacity.

| Jul 5, 2022

It stars Jack Benny, one of the great Jewish-American comedians of the 20th century, and Carole Lombard, a wonderful screwball comedian, as well as Robert Stack and Sig Ruman.

| May 2, 2022

Throughout To Be or Not to Be, Lubitsch orchestrates a comic work of art whose central theme of acting offers perhaps the most accurate assessment of and staggering blow against the Nazi movement ever put to film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 23, 2022

Slapstick switcheroos and distractions abound, but the underlying suspense of Nazi oppression never lets up.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Mar 24, 2021

Ernst Lubitsch's To Be Or Not to Be, starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, is a top-notch World War 2 satire taking place during the Holocaust.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 17, 2019

To Be or Not to Be (1942) is Berlin Germany-born director Ernst Lubitsch's sophisticated screwball masterpiece, with satirical comedy, romance, and suspense. The controversial anti-war comedy about espionage and politics from producer Alexander Korda

| Original Score: A+ | Sep 29, 2019

Despite some of the serious situations, the comedic, brilliant, and delightful tone dominate in the movie, making it into a masterpiece. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Sep 11, 2019

Although seemingly played for laughs, there is a depth and multilayered meaning to much of the action and dialogue that led an audience newly involved to consider what part they might play in a world at war.

| Jul 25, 2019

A masterpiece. ... Hurtling forward with its dizzying blend of laughs and intrigue, the movie's blessed with a script that's jam-packed with memorable quips (some laced with naughty double entendres), with most of the best ones handed over to Benny.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 4, 2019

It isn't, I am sorry to say, Lubitsch's most intriguing comedy, nor is it the best of Jack Benny vehicles, but it will do until another buggy comes along.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 18, 2018

Classic '40s anti-Nazi comedy has some violence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 27, 2017

So long the milieu claims to be nothing nearer Europe than the stage Hollywood studio (and why otherwise should everyone speak self-consciously good American?), the fun waxes fast and [furious].

| Sep 28, 2015

It's not all-time championship Lubitsch.... But the film is operating in two totally distinct comic modes and both of them are executed perfectly.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 26, 2015

One of Lubitsch's greatest works and one of the most inventive anti-Nazi films to emerge from Hollywood.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 20, 2013

Singing "Heil pbbt!" right in Der Fuehrer's face was certainly an act of resistance, and Lubitsch, Benny, Lombard, and company sure knew how to carry the tune.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 9, 2013

To Be or Not to Be has all the hallmarks of a Lubitsch comedy: a solidly constructed plot, good comic pacing, a light touch, and strong performances from top to bottom. [Blu-ray]

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 3, 2013

Lubitsch understood at the time, even if many critics and filmgoers didn't, that all those elements and all that rule-breaking make To Be Or Not To Be brilliant.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 27, 2013

A masterpiece satire around the Second World War is more likely to be appreciated now after some distance.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 20, 2008