“The Odyssey is a veritable banquet of such loud, grandiose, movie-movie pleasures,” a major-league critic has written. Well, good! Banquets offer tons of food and audiences, therefore, will feel pleasurably sated. Except it’s not that simple. Because Chris Nolan‘s new film, which offers “so much to feel here at a sensory level”, nonetheless exudes a “slightly aloof, soul-skirting chill.”
That’s putting it plainly and succinctly, but with relatively few exceptions most film critics write their reviews, for safety’s sake, so as not to stir things up too much. They say what they feel they can honestly say within the bounds of political caution.
In response to The Odyssey (which opens tomorrow), this is more or less what they’ve all done today. They’re praising with honesty and passion as far as it goes, but — it pains some of them to indicate this — they’re not blown away because this nearly three-hour film is cool and oblique and doesn’t exectly spin a rousing yarn. But most critics would rather not say that in so many words.
If Claude Rains‘ Cpt. Louis Renault was a know-it-all critic tapping out reviews in 2026, his reaction to The Odyssey might be “I have no conviction if that’s what you mean…I blow with the wind…and for now the prevailing wind happens to be from the big-spending Universal as well as from the social media chorus of the Nolan whores.”
But even given Cpt. Renault’s practical-minded attitude about job security, Odyssey reviews by Guy Lodge and David Rooney, the lead critics of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, are sincerely respectful and generally positive without being absolute raves.
One reason is that Nolan is a cold fish, and it shouldn’t therefore surprise anyone to discover that he’s once again created an epic work of self-portraiture.
Call me intemperate, but I’m imagining that these “very impressive except for this, that and a few other problems” reactions have struck fear if not panic in the hearts of Nolan loyalists, most of whom have been expecting unqualified hosannahs. The whores were looking to orgiastically dance around the Odyssey bonfire, but now they’re anxious and restless.
(1) “A high-minded if at times snoozy spectacle”….snoozy?;
(2) “A meditative action movie both immense and intimate, albeit one whose [narrative] flow is impeded by the inherently episodic nature of the nonlinear source material“…an impeded narrative resulting in a patchwork meditative vibe?;
(3) “The internal transformation of Matt Damon‘s Odysseus “from a hubristic warrior to a man humbled by trauma and loss, is as near to a continuous plotline as the movie gets“…stating that a film lacks a continuous plotline is another way of saying there isn’t very much of a campfire-tale “and then what happens?” quality, right?;
(4) The “dull interludes” involving Charlize Theron‘s nymph Calypso “stop the narrative dead in its tracks, recalling Sean Penn’s purgatorial wanderings in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life“…dull interludes that force a barely-there narrative to stop dead??…jumpin’ jehoshaphat!!
(1) The headline reads “In Christopher Nolan’s vast, thrilling, slightly aloof epic, Homer Is Where the Heart Is Not“….it’s more sensually than emotionally felt”….aloof and not all that emotional?…boinnnggg!
(2) “[Pic] has been reshaped to fit the director’s predilection for trickily non-linear storytelling, its disordered timeline a feat of intricate weaving and unweaving”…in my book the term “tricky” applied to a film tends to mean that it’s elusive, spotty, a tad unsatisfying;
(3) “The Odyssey is consistently involving and frequently dazzling, [but] it’s never exactly moving; it keeps the eyes and ears so lavishly occupied, while engaging the mind with its structural games of cat’s cradle, you almost don’t notice, or mind, that your heart isn’t quite in it“….what is a movie that doesn’t quite touch your emotions?
(4) “Yet if we care in the moment for [Odysseus]’s survival, it’s harder to summon as much feeling for his return…Nolan’s writing is sharper and more surprising on matters of honor and betrayal among men than it is on more vaguely outlined family relations“…not much feeling generated by Matt Damon‘s return to Ithaca?….that’s the climax, no?
From a review by The Film Stage’s Nick Newman:
“But if everything is amazing, then nothing is; and if everything conveys the grandeur of IMAX 70mm, then little shall. This is a tantalizing concept that does not bear fruit. When close-ups and landscapes are applied in equal size, a kind of visual enervation settles into The Odyssey’s three hours — no Trojan Horse for film exhibition, but a 1.43:1 monument to itself.”
Film Threat’s Alan Ng: “The sound was the toughest element for me to get over. Right off the bat, from Travis Scott’s poetic performance to simple dialogue, the sound mixing was off. I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying.”
HE sidenote: This is what Nolan has often done. The murky dialogue can be infuriating. He gets high by pissing people off in this respect.
Back to Ng: “The editing is relentless. It felt like the three-hour final product was an attempt to squeeze in an eight-hour movie. There are very few stops and virtually no breaks in the story. Moments of quiet felt like they were edited out for time. Every transition was a quick cut, and stories felt like an adventurer’s highlight reels.
“In the end, I just wanted The Odyssey to feel like an epic, grand adventure, and, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I wanted this story to say something about humanity. Anything that felt inspiring or profound. Instead, we just got this grand adventure for the sake of being a grand adventure.”