Lenny (1974)

The review praises Fosse's remarkable film version of the play and Dustin Hoffman's outstanding performance as Lenny Bruce. It highlights the black-and-white photography capturing the grit and the strong supporting turns, especially by Valerie Perrine.

Fosse’s biopic of Lenny Bruce is gritty and downbeat yet riveting in its high-contrast monochromatic style. The critic highlights the film’s newsreel-like structure, Felliniesque flourishes, and incisive editing, particularly a bravura single-take nightclub scene.

The critic praises Fosse's evocative biopic of Lenny Bruce for its structure drawing on transcripts and court records, strong performances especially by Valerie Perrine, and smoky black-and-white cinematography with jazz-inflected routines, but notes it fails to fully convey Bruce's outrageous humor.

The mockumentary biopic succeeds through Hoffman's lively impersonation of Bruce's routines and Fosse's capture of his jazz-inflected style, though it lacks a strong narrative drive.

Kael criticizes the film for turning Lenny Bruce into a saintly martyr and for its thin script and superficial semi-documentary approach. She finds it well-made technically but ultimately cold, abstract, and far inferior to Albert Goldman's book on the subject.

Ebert finds the film fails as a persuasive portrait despite strong individual scenes and Hoffman's performance. Fosse's quasi-documentary style inspired by Citizen Kane gets in the way of the material and prevents an organic character.

Canby calls the film about one-fourth brilliant in its recreated stage performances, which are superbly acted by Hoffman. The rest is a fancily edited but shallow dramatized biography no more profound than old Hollywood biopics.

The film is faulted as a conventional Hollywood biopic that reduces Lenny Bruce's life to cliché. Strong nightclub scenes and performances by Hoffman and Perrine are undermined by Fosse's direction and lack of psychological depth.

The film succeeds in exploring Lenny Bruce's complicated personality without sugarcoating his flaws, while celebrating his boundary-pushing impact on stand-up. It stands out as Fosse's most grounded and stylistically bold work, anchored by Dustin Hoffman's excellent performance in the lead role.

The critic finds Fosse's biopic of Lenny Bruce pretty boring overall, despite Dustin Hoffman's stellar performance. It singles out the creative editing and production design for praise but complains that certain scenes make it simply not fun to watch.