The Goldfinch

A flat and lumbering albeit beautifully filmed drama that bores more than it entertains.

It's all poeticism without a sense of humanity, since the characters themselves aren't written as people, but as broad statements.

Whether or not you've read the book, the film of The Goldfinch is definitely worth a look; it's no masterpiece but it's a whole heap better than many of the studio-made American films released so far this year.

I sat there, watching and thinking, "there are so many good things in this, yet none of them are touching me in the slightest." I was bored, and that's almost the most damning thing. Considerably less than the sum of its parts.

A beautifully shot mess.

There is no sense of pace or mystery, but rather an evident need to get through Tartt's dense plotting in the two-and-a-half-hour run time.

The Goldfinch is dripping with sentimentality, twee visuals and ponderous emotive pull, but is short on logic, a strong narrative and believability.

...quite faithful to the original’s challenging plot...

Even at two and a half hours, John Crowley’s film version of The Goldfinch feels compressed, sacrificing plot development for the sake of character development to the point where it becomes completely unbelievable.

It's well-crafted, but there's absolutely no emotional connection.