Charade (1963 Film) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Charade has received generally positive reviews from critics, receiving an "All Critics" 91% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, with an average of 8.1 out of 10, despite receiving a 67% rating from the "Top Critics" category, with an average of 6 out of 10.

In a review published January 6, 1963 in The New York Times by Bosley Crowther, the film was criticised for its "grisly touches" and "gruesome violence", despite receiving praise for its screenplay with regards to its "sudden twists, shocking gags, eccentric arrangements and occasionally bright and brittle lines" as well as Donen's direction, said to be halfway between a 1930s screwball comedy and North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock.

In a Time Out review, the film was rated positively, with the assertion that it is a "mammoth audience teaser Grant imparts his ineffable charm, Kennedy (with metal hand) provides comic brutality, while Hepburn is elegantly fraught." While reviewing the blu-ray DVD version of the film, Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine gave the film a positive three-and-a-half out of five rating, calling it a "high-end, kitschy whodunit", and writing that it is "riotous and chaotic take on the spy thriller, essentially, but it structurally resembles Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None" as well as describing it as "some sort of miraculous entertainment".