Metacritic Movie Ratings
Les Misérables Reviews

A sample of reviews from critics across the country.

• 90

  out of 100

  Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern

  This "Les Mis" does make you feel, intensely and sometimes thrillingly, by honoring the emotional core of its source material.

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• 88

  out of 100

  USA TodayClaudia Puig

  Les Misérables is sweeping, as would be expected given the scope of the hugely popular stage musical from which it is adapted. But it's also wonderfully intimate, thanks to Tom Hooper's deft direction.

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• 88

  out of 100

  ReelViewsJames Berardinelli

  Les Miserables understandably cuts some of the stage production's numbers, but all of the major anthems are intact and wonderfully presented.

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• 80

  out of 100

  Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan

  Despite its pitfalls, this movie musical is a clutch player that delivers an emotional wallop when it counts. You can walk into the theater as an agnostic, but you may just leave singing with the choir.

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• 70

  out of 100

  VarietyJustin Chang

  Yet for all its expected highs, the adaptation has been managed with more gusto than grace; at the end of the day, this impassioned epic too often topples beneath the weight of its own grandiosity.

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• 50

  out of 100

  Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum

  This steam-driven military weapon of an enterprise is a sobering reminder of just how tinny a musical Les Misérables was in the first place.

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• 50

  out of 100

  The New York TimesManohla Dargis

  Song after song, as relationships and rebellion bloom, you wait in vain for the movie to, as well, and for the filmmaking to rise to the occasion of both its source material and its hard-working performers.

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• 50

  out of 100

  The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthy

  As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good.

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• 38

  out of 100

  Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips

  The camera bobs and weaves like a drunk, frantically. So you have hammering close-ups, combined with woozy insecurity each time more than two people are in the frame. Twenty minutes into the retelling of fugitive Valjean, his monomaniacal pursuer Javert, the torch singers Fantine and Eponine and the rest, I wanted somebody to just nail the damn camera to the ground.

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