61
Metascore
10 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanThe Rehearsal is engrossing, but it’s not a major vision.
- 75IndieWireMichael NordineIndieWireMichael NordineSet at a prestigious drama school and frequently engrossing, the film unfolds like an experimental acting workshop that occasionally falters when the plot intrudes on the performances.
- 75The PlaylistNoel MurrayThe PlaylistNoel MurrayThroughout the film, Maclean and Perkins toy with the ever-shifting layers of truth and fiction in a theater rehearsal. But they’re also using Catton’s book to comment on how school can sometimes be a poor preparation for life itself.
- 67The Film StageThe Film StageIts visual precision elicits a unique mood that elevates the film from the normal, self-important teenage tale.
- 63RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzRogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzThe problem is that the relatively brief running time (less than two hours) works at cross-purposes with the movie's laid back characterizations and populated cast.
- 60We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoWe Got This CoveredMatt DonatoThe Rehearsal is much like any coming-of-age melodrama, and while its meat is a little overdone, its intro and finale bookends do make up for a lack of flavor in between.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeThe Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeTreating the subject of creative exploitation not with overheated moralism but as a year-in-the-life social chronicle, the picture makes a solid, if very tardy, follow-up to the director's 1999 breakout Jesus' Son.
- 60The New York TimesGlenn KennyThe New York TimesGlenn KennyAt the end Ms. Maclean forsakes all the unsettling subtlety and nuance she has had so clearly in her command to serve up a finale that I found frankly confounding, despite its having been foreshadowed.
- 50The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe Rehearsal, director Alison Maclean’s first feature since the 1999 Denis Johnson adaptation Jesus’ Son, is such a hodgepodge of arthouse references, arch distancing effects, and emotionally vacant wide-screen compositions that one could easily mistake it for an awkward debut film.
- 50New York PostSara StewartNew York PostSara StewartThis is a single story that feels like a handful of sketches in need of more connection.