Most critics respond warmly to Youth, with praise clustering around Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel’s performances as ageing artists, Sorrentino’s elaborate compositions and his use of music. Caine’s humour, restraint and world-weariness give many reviewers an emotional connection to the film’s reflections on age and creativity. Admirers find tenderness and melancholy beneath the visual extravagance, with several enjoying the shifts between absurd comedy and quieter feeling.
The spread of opinion is wide, and the main disagreement concerns how much those images and observations amount to. Even some favourable reviews find the storytelling rambling or the dialogue stiff; less persuaded critics see attractive surfaces concealing thin ideas and limited emotional depth. Slant Magazine raises a sharper objection to the film’s narrow sympathy and its treatment of women as symbolic types. The Independent also breaks with the praise for Caine, finding him aloof and short of his usual charm.
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Los Angeles Times
3 December 2015 · Kenneth Turan
90*
Youth is a quixotic, idiosyncratic cinematic essay and meditation on what lasts and matters at any age, perfectly suited to Sorrentino’s visual flair and soul-capturing style. Michael Caine’s nuanced performance anchors the stellar ensemble in its offbeat rhythms.
Sorrentino delivers his most tender film yet, an emotionally rich contemplation of life’s wisdom with Caine and Keitel bringing lifetime depth to the roles of old friends. Stunning compositions, music, and humor balance the quiet melancholy and human experience.
The critic calls the film exquisite and operatic, praising its inventiveness, brio and poignancy in turns bitter, hilarious, vivid and beautiful. Michael Caine is superb as the ageing composer.
Praises the film as a voluptuary’s feast of sensory cinematic pleasures and an improvement on Sorrentino’s prior English-language effort, highlighting the strong performances by Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as aging artists.
Highlights Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel delivering some of their best performances in years in Sorrentino’s whimsical take on aging artists at a Swiss spa.
The critic calls it a joyous, gently moving experience anchored by a fearless central turn from Michael Caine. Sorrentino delivers an operatic ode to old age that reminds viewers respect can take a lifetime to earn.
Michael Caine makes hay with a soulful role that brings his playful, world-weary charm to the fore. The film is a playground for Sorrentino, whose ear for music and visual genius take viewers from the absurd to the profound.
A visual banquet meditating on ageing with sophistication, wit and tenderness. It praises the crackling dialogue and performances of Caine and Keitel as the affectionate, curmudgeonly core, along with Sorrentino's masterful filmmaking and optimistic final scene.
Notes Sorrentino’s musical, free-associative style and Caine’s dignified star turn, while observing that the film’s intuitive juxtapositions can feel liberating or oppressive depending on the viewer.
Sorrentino's wry cinematic opera reaches new heights of showy magnificence in this meditation on ageing and creativity set in a Swiss spa. It dazzles with ravishing images and performances but the pursuit of the aesthetic money-shot holds it back from greatness.
The critic finds the film imperfect and maximalist but relishes its brio, flamboyance, and excessive grace, calling it a madcap oratorio of erratic splendor.
The film is an anti-elegiac drama-comedy that emphasizes small, commonplace emotions over grand wisdom, with characters realizing their limited perspectives. It culminates in a powerful operatic performance that underscores its deceptive emotional depth.
Sorrentino’s film centers on two aging artists at a Swiss resort reflecting on senescence and nostalgia in a Euro buddy-movie style. The director’s exquisite pictorial sense and the music stand out amid some translated dialogue stiffness.
An entertaining but minor work from Sorrentino, visually stylish yet ultimately underwhelming in substance. It singles out Michael Caine's droll and watchable performance for praise amid the film's elegant but wan exercise in ennui.
The film meditates on old age and artistic frustrations through suavity at a spa, feeling sumptuous yet aimless like leafing through an album of sights and sounds. Three strong female performances provide fire amid the collective reflection.
The film is diverting but shallow, a low-key and rambling follow-up lacking the coherent power of Sorrentino's prior works. It offers visual ballsiness and some great moments but feels reckless next to its half-formed observations on ageing and ambition.
Finds the film ravishing and compelling in its depiction of alienation and inertia but ultimately lacking forward momentum, resulting in an emotionally paralyzed work about emotionally paralyzed characters.
The film is a witty mood-piece with quirky cameos and vivid style in an Alpine setting of luxurious ennui, but its riffs on artistic impasse do not land as impressively as the director's earlier work. Real heart is too often sidelined.
Critiques the film’s brittle ornamentation and narrow empathy, noting graceful moments but faulting its sympathy for characters’ worst impulses and treatment of women and other figures as thin symbolic types.
The critic describes the film as wildly indulgent pastiche Fellini, with too many whimsical interludes and meditations that prevent depth or pathos. Caine delivers an aloof performance short on his usual charm.
The film offers vivid, sometimes surreal tableaux and colorful characters but the story gets lost in its aesthetics and grandiloquence. It is a ravishing yet occasionally incoherent portrait that remains poignant with touching characters.
The film is a languid meditation on aging, art, and mortality centered on performances by Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel at an alpine spa. It foregrounds strong acting over spectacle while exploring passion, loss, and the human comedy.
The film swirls around themes of life's impermanence, love's fragility, and desire's persistence in a Swiss spa setting. It is praised for its sumptuous visuals, light melodious touch, and potent melancholic spirit in the finale.
Sorrentino’s visual flair and fertile imagination make the film constantly engaging, with the camera capturing striking vistas and bodies in an Alpine setting. The trappings and style more than make up for any lack of substance in this exploration of ageing and obsessions.
The critic finds the film visually sumptuous but lacking in emotional depth and cohesion, with pleasures that are sporadic and never deep. Caine and Keitel deliver strong performances, and the music-filled finale stands out for its ruminative grace.
The film is visually striking at times but ultimately a damp squib that feels superficial despite its ambitions about memory, relationships and sadness. Strong performances from Jane Fonda and Michael Caine stand out amid the confusion over characters and setting.
3 December 2015 · festival review · The Playlist Staff
30*
An infinity pool of beautiful hogwash that offers precious little wisdom despite observations and stilted epithets. There are some winning performances and the film mostly looks great, but it lacks shading or ambiguity.
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