This Must Be the PlaceMovie Reviews

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    Washington Post | Michael O'Sullivan

    Sean Penn makes a striking screen presence in This Must Be the Place, a smart, funny and original road movie by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino ("Il Divo"). Read full review

  • 88
    Slant Magazine | Joseph Jon Lanthier

    The film believes in maturity, but only as a freely continual process of acceptance. Read full review

  • 88
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    Few actors have played a wider variety of characters, and even fewer have done it without making it seem like a stunt. Read full review

  • 75
    Boston Globe | Ty Burr

    This isn't a great movie, but it is a special one. And Penn is something to see. Read full review

  • 70
    NPR | Mark Jenkins

    This mashup of genres and themes doesn't entirely succeed, but it is warm, funny and ably crafted. Read full review

  • 63
    St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Joe Williams

    Penn has created a colorful tour guide, but in This Must Be the Place, there's no there there. Read full review

  • 50
    The Hollywood Reporter | Todd McCarthy

    Eccentric, misguided and occasionally charming and sweet, this curiosity item with Sean Penn in one of his nuttier performances is unlikely to be embraced critically or commercially. Read full review

  • 25
    Miami Herald | Rene Rodriguez

    This Must Be the Place is as emotionally zonked-out as its protagonist, and just as difficult to warm up to. Read full review

  • 25
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    Worst of all, in promoting its hero's eccentric journey as a voyage of healing, the movie replaces emotional precision and intellectual honesty with syrupy sincerity and insistence. It turns boring and cute and begs us to love it. Read full review

  • 20
    Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern

    As juxtapositions go, regressed Goth rock star and Holocaust could hardly be more bizarre, and bizarre can be good when it's done deftly. In this case, however, it's done ponderously and sententiously. Read full review

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