Color Me Kubrick: Critic Reviews

The film reveals, rather delectably, how potent the power of suggestion can be in a world gone madly groupie.

Once the movie gets started, it doesn't know where to go or how to end. It more or less repeats itself.

Color Me Kubrick is like a nice, deep, clear cocktail of ammonia on the rocks: bracing, comic, astonishing, all of which hide its poison center.

The movie never convinces us there's anyone there to expose, though, and Malkovich flits from scene to scene without ever anchoring Conway in a lasting reality.

A shapeless, low-grade comedy of flamboyance, giggling at Conway's histrionics and fishnet gloving.

One problem is that Malkovich gets free rein to be Malkovich, the often showy actor, rather than Conway, a humble London travel agent. It's a grandstanding performance that's more about hamminess than substance.

The movie is endless even at less than 90 minutes.

John Malkovich has one of the roles of his life, and he acts it up like a haughty gourmet who's just picked up a succulent treat.

Writer Anthony Frewin and director Brian Cook uses Conway's unlikely saga to mount an appreciative send-up of a certain style of gay extravagance, with John Malkovich having a field day as Conway.

Without much insight into the self-dramatizing enigma of Conway, nor any representation of the solitary auteur he impersonated, the film becomes a repetitive series of small-scale con games played on cabdrivers, bar owners and wannabe stars.

Not only is there nothing there, the nothingness is a complete bore. When a film's highpoint is a soundtrack that relies heavily on other soundtracks, you've got problems.

Great fun for the first 20 minutes but seems long at 86.

A mean-spirited, trashy and intermittently funny film.

At best a kitschy Catch Me If You Can and at worst a tedious comedy.

Director Brian W. Cook should know that hopes are seldom high for movies that debut on DVD the same day they hit the multiplex.

Scarcely an insightful biographical portrait, Color Me Kubrick is still interesting, perhaps even intimidating, as a study of the way fandom can so readily be turned against itself.

It's simply not a movie, not as it stands. It's a five-minute demo reel stretched to feature length.

Any picture featuring a sped-up version of the "William Tell Overture" is so drunk on its own whimsy that it most likely sucks with a dedicated vigour.

Malkovich captures not only the nuttiness of Conway, with his smorgasbord of foreign-sounding accents, but also his pathos.

Conway looked and sounded nothing like Kubrick and didn't even research his supposed identity. He's clearly a fascinating character who deserves a better movie.

The irony of Color Me Kubrick is that the visual tricks merely serve as a backdrop for Malkovich's inspired high-wire performance.

A little bit like a coloring book -- flip the pages and each is pretty much like the one before, escalating variations on the same scam, with Malkovich filling in the cartoonish shadings, and occasionally going way outside the lines.

This is a kicky little movie.