Reception
The film was a failure both with critics and at the box office, in spite of its high-profile cast, direction, and production team. Few critics endorsed it, although it did garner strong Oscar "buzz" before its initial opening.
Rotten Tomatoes gives a rating of 11% "Rotten" based on 153 reviews with a consensus stating "With its star-studded cast and hallowed source material (the novel of the same name won the Pulitzer Prize, and the 1949 original film took home a best picture Oscar), All the King's Men has the pedigree of a prestige picture. Don't be fooled. With a scenery-chewing performance from Sean Penn, an absence of political insight, and an overall lack of narrative cohesiveness, Men gives Oscar bait a bad name."
Entertainment Weekly in its August 18, 2006 issue included All the King's Men in its Oscar Preview and said the film was most likely to win an Oscar. The article concluded the only reason for the film not to win an Oscar was its delayed opening (the film was originally to be opened in 2005).
Richard Schickel (Time Magazine) liked the movie, arguing that "it's much more faithful to the tone of the novel" than the original.
Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times) praised the film's "undeniable moral seriousness" and the actors' "exceptional ensemble work." He argued that Zaillian's script and direction "expertly extracted the core of this greatest of American political novels, a work that is both of its time and outside it."
A. O. Scott (New York Times) expressed disappointment with the film: "Nothing in the picture works. It is both overwrought and tedious, its complicated narrative bogging down in lyrical voiceover, long flashbacks and endless expository conversations between people speaking radically incompatible accents."
Michael Medved gave All the King's Men two stars (out of four) calling it "depressing and disappointing", a "stodgy melodrama" and a "pointless, pretentious, plodding period-piece".
Recently, the film was featured in Nathan Rabin's ongoing blog feature for The Onion's A.V. Club, "My Year of Flops". Of three categories (failure, fiasco, or secret success), he labeled All the King's Men as a failure and said of the film: "Zaillian’s dud manages the formidable feat of being at once histrionic and agonizingly dull, hysterically over-the-top yet strangely lifeless."
Zaillian was clearly stunned by the poor critical and box-office results of this film, which opened with only $3.8 million and barely made $7.2 million at the end of its run in US theaters. The weekend's other new wide release, Jackass Number Two, made $28.1 million.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Zaillian said that the film's poor performance was "like getting hit by a truck. ... I don't know what to make of it."
Read more about this topic: All The King's Men (2006 film)
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