BEING THERE
  All Critics (62) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (59) | Rotten (3)
  Under the direction of Hal Ashby, in his first film since Coming Home, Sellers gives an impressively disciplined performance, always taut and under control. The difficulty with the film, however, is that the screenplay is basically a one-joke story.
 
  April 7, 2022
 
  Joe Pollack
  St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  TOP CRITIC
  Gently directed by Hal Ashby, this satire of a ruling class in which nobody knows anything is almost plausible, and certainly topical.
 
  January 17, 2020 | Rating: 4/5
 
  Ed Potton
  Times (UK)
  TOP CRITIC
  The result must be one of the boldest of commercial comedies, for the way it turns on passages of dead time, the dreadful pauses while other characters struggle to see the significance in each of Chance’s cryptically meaningless remarks.
 
  January 16, 2020
 
  Richard Combs
  Sight & Sound
  TOP CRITIC
  A brutal look at America and Americans that gently lifts up the mirror image that television gives us of ourselves, smashes it on the marble floors of our political institutions and holds a chunk of jagged glass to our throats. And then makes us laugh.
 
  April 28, 2018
 
  Michael Blowen
  Boston Globe
  TOP CRITIC
  Sellers has never been better and he embellishes the detached, childlike innocence of this character with perfect style and timing. It’s a deceptively simple performance, but it is essentially the core and substance of the film.
 
  December 19, 2016
 
  Ron Pennington
  Hollywood Reporter
  TOP CRITIC
  Here is a comedy that valiantly defies both gravity and the latest Hollywood fashion.
 
  July 8, 2014
 
  Frank Rich
  TIME Magazine
  TOP CRITIC
  Peter Sellers’ last great performance came in this gently satiric look at the dawning mass media culture from the book by Jerzy Kosiński.
 
  May 30, 2022 | Rating: 4.5/5
 
  Christopher Lloyd
  The Film Yap
  Alternately lovely and lacerating.
 
  May 24, 2022 | Rating: 3.5/4
 
  Matt Brunson
  Film Frenzy
  Devoid of finger-wagging, bellicose tirades, or emotional manipulation, Being There is a scathing commentary on politics and the media that points out how patently easy is it to fool people, often with their own willful, enthusiastic participation.
 
  March 8, 2022 | Rating: 4.5/5
 
  Michael Clark
  Epoch Times
  Among the sharpest of all satires, Being There, released in 1979, would be the last great film made by director Hal Ashby, who had the most extraordinary track record of any filmmaker of the 1970s.
 
  February 14, 2022 | Rating: 4/4
 
  Brian Eggert
  Deep Focus Review
  One of the rare cases in which a novel is translated into a film with its humor, insight, and pathos intact.
 
  January 11, 2021
 
  Barbara Brecher
  Berkeley Barb
  The humor continues to surface, regularly generating laugh-out-loud bewilderment and crushing awkwardness.
 
  August 27, 2020 | Rating: 9/10
 
  Mike Massie
  Gone With The Twins…

LIFE OF BRIAN
  All Critics (67) | Top Critics (20) | Fresh (64) | Rotten (3)
  I’m desperate for another piece of comedy to do what [Life of Brian] did.
 
  April 26, 2019
 
  Robbie Collin
  Kermode & Mayo’s Film Review
  TOP CRITIC
  Life of Brian is an unexpectedly earnest, sweet-natured hymn to the idea of tolerance.
 
  April 12, 2019 | Rating: 5/5
 
  Peter Bradshaw
  Guardian
  TOP CRITIC
  Regularly voted the funniest British film. A contender.
 
  September 13, 2018 | Rating: 10/10
 
  Donald Clarke
  Irish Times
  TOP CRITIC
  Brian’s life is pure hell. And very funny to watch.
 
  August 17, 2017
 
  Robert Osborne
  Hollywood Reporter
  TOP CRITIC
  I’ve always considered it the group’s nadir; it seems toothlessly silly.
 
  September 11, 2009
 
  J. R. Jones
  Chicago Reader
  TOP CRITIC
  Just as wacky and imaginative as their earlier film outings.
 
  July 31, 2008
 
  Variety Staff
  Variety
  TOP CRITIC
  Rewatching “Brian” now, one really does get the feeling that the oft-repeated phrase “They could NEVER film that today” absolutely applies here.
 
  June 13, 2022 | Rating: 4/4
 
  Roger Moore
  Movie Nation
  The plot treads a narrow, semi-blasphemous path through ancient times.
 
  April 16, 2020 | Rating: 3.5/5
 
  Leigh Paatsch
  Herald Sun (Australia)
  While the movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it is professionally impeccable. [Full Review in Spanish]
 
  August 13, 2019
 
  Diego Galán
  El Pais (Spain)
  Life of Brian is undoubtedly the greatest religious satire of all-time. Comedic gold.
 
  May 7, 2019 | Rating: 5/5
 
  C.H. Newell
  Father Son Holy Gore
  While the most ambitious and thematically coherent of the Monty Python feature films, Life of Brian is also the least of them.
 
  February 25, 2019 | Rating: 3/5
 
  Christopher Lloyd
  The Film Yap
  The Pythons’ instincts strike home, not only in Brian’s miserable failure to imbue his followers with some basic decency, but in the self-apparent barbarism that he’s fighting against.
 
  November 29, 2017
 
  Rob Vaux
  Cinema-stache…