Metacritic-Rezensionen

Green operates in a smarter mode of storytelling, giving the audience the benefit of the doubt that they'll notice the details, and he's clearly whispered Pacino into giving a nuanced and human-sized turn.

Manglehorn is a lush, hazy drama that requires a certain open-mindedness, but there's no doubting the craft of its director, who continues to prove himself one of the less predictable and most skilled craftsmen around.

For filmmaker and actor, even on those occasions when Manglehorn’s risks do not pay off, we have to credit the courage and confidence it took to attempt them; but more often than not they pay dividends and the result gently dazzles.

Pacino's Manglehorn is a subtle master class in neutral shading, with none of the garish flashes that sometimes bedevil his work.

David Gordon Green stages even fleeting tonal palate cleansers with a self-consciousness that parallels Al Pacino's acting.

The style, one senses, is overcompensating for a narrative slackness that has nowhere particular to go other than anti-climax. That's not to say that Manglehorn isn't a good film - it is. It's just that Pacino's seasoned performance deserved a great film.

Something about working with Pacino forces what could have been a breaks-the-mold character portrait into factory-made territory.

As is to be expected from Green in his pensive mode, there are lovely images in Manglehorn... But Manglehorn is also the latest entry into the tiresome Sad Man Learning to Love Again genre.

The mix of limpid naturalism with lyricism that has often distinguished David Gordon Green's indie films slides into sentimentality, or worse yet, whimsy in Manglehorn.

The picture is slight to the point of translucence.