The Hoax: Critic Reviews

Lasse Hallstrom isn't the first filmmaker I'd think of to exhibit such adult zing, but this is the best thing the director has done since What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

The literary and journalistic frauds of the present era are small potatoes compared to the work of Clifford Irving, the subject of The Hoax.

An elegant, entertaining parable of the emperor's new clothes.

Highly entertaining.

We never establish an emotional connection with Irving. Even though we're caught up in his derring-do as he beguiles entire meeting rooms of jaded publishers and editors, we're kept at a dissatisfying distance from Irving and the movie.

Gere seems as born again as he did during the musical numbers in Chicago.

It's hard to get a fix on what Hallstrom had in mind.

At least half of The Hoax is a giddy pleasure.

Hallstrom stops well short of cheesy, however, and he never veers from the movie's central fascination: the author's obsessive melding with his subject.

It's bracing to see a grand con-man comedy like The Hoax, in which our moral universe is affirmed, and yet the fabled trickster Clifford Irving -- who wrote a fraudulent autobiography of Howard Hughes -- is so darn likable.

So sure is Hallstrom's pacing that you barely notice the withering moral of the tale: when the money is big enough, everyone is a mug.

The filmmakers catch the right glittery look and paranoid intensity, and they make gutsy speculations about the story beneath the story.

Richard Gere is less charismatic than Irving and Alfred Molina turns Irving's assistant into a buffoon, but the secondary cast is fun to watch.

An entertaining blend of drama and comedy, and a powerhouse performance by Richard Gere as a man running a mile a minute on charm and hokum.

The Hoax never wanders too far from its pitiful but somehow joyously deceitful center, and Gere captures the sheer electricity of a man who, even for only a few moments, seems to have made reality play by his rules.

Ultimately, The Hoax seems designed to appeal to the larcenous impulse in all of us.

A surprisingly layered vehicle for a maniacally conniving Richard Gere, backed up by a superb Alfred Molina as his accomplice.

I've never been a fan of Richard Gere, but he gives the performance of his career as Clifford Irving.

An amusing bounce through an unhappy period in American history, recalling the attitudes, fashions, politics and paranoias of the day.

Even Machiavelli would have raised an eyebrow at some of the double-crossings and dealings in The Hoax.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Hallstrom and Wheeler have a great time setting up and embroidering Irving's increasingly elaborate scheme.

As a movie, The Hoax isn't a fraud but it's not the real deal, either.

Jaunty, likable and surprisingly relevant tale of one of the better scandals of the '70s.

The film is a timely reminder that even the savviest and most skeptical audience can get snookered by the natural desire for a great story.

Gere persuasively portrays a guy whose confidence blossoms as he makes the discovery that as his lies grow so does the ease with which he tells them.