Live! (2007)

Critic Reviews

• Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

  Worth seeing for the slinky, snakelike, sexy and oddly vulnerable performance of Eva Mendes, a star-making role if I've ever seen one.

• David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews

  A surprisingly plausible mockumentary...

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  There is a big problem in believing any of it, but a certain amount of fun watching television's more ghastly denizens wonder whether murder will improve the ratings. It does.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  Mendes (best known as Will Smith's love interest in Hitch) is enjoyably poisonous, making Live! just about worth catching.

• Jane Crowther, Total Film

  This crass, inauthentic mock-doc exposing the evils of reality shows and the venality of TV honchos manages both to bore and insult simultaneously.

• Tim Evans, Sky Movies

  However, in a world where reality show formats are beyond parody, this particular gun goes off half-cocked.

• Cath Clarke, Guardian [UK]

  Triumphs, humiliation, barmy monologues and temper tantrums - reality television is scarcely in need of parodying. Certainly not from a preachy film like this.

• James Christopher, Times [UK]

  Bill Guttentag's film is one of those shrill and cheery conspiracies on the wilder side of probability. But the black comedy has an infectious pace, and screwy logic.

• Jon Fortgang, Film4

  A sporadically entertaining but uneven media satire that never quite delivers on its clear sense of moral outrage.

• Tom Huddlestone, Time Out

  It's hard to distinguish between the cynical indifference of the characters and the arrogant nihilism of the film itself.

• Helen OHara, Empire Magazine

  Smart, incisive, but not as sharp as it should have been. With a subject this ripe for evisceration, it's a pity to let it off with flesh wounds.

• Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

  This straight-faced satire of American television raises important issues and is engaging enough to keep us gripped. But the astute commentary peaks too early, then gives way to a finale that's messy in more ways than one.

• Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

  Watchable satire with some nice touches and a strong performance by Eva Mendes, but it's neither as funny, as clever or as original as it thinks it is.

• Victor Olliver, Teletext

  Mendes' Courbet is all the c-words: clever, cunning, a control freak, cynical; ultimately conformist. Here's another c-word - Cowell, Simon Cowell. Like him, she knows what the public want - before even they know it.

• Keith Uhlich, House Next Door

  So spake that prescient philosopher Julie Brown: "Just be vague, there's nothing to it."

Read all 15 critic reviews