Avis Metacritic

Freed from the slavishness of most authorized biography, the film makers try bold strokes.

An absorbing look at emotional tyranny, with a great screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

Cool, assured, emotionally remote, Merchant Ivory's Surviving Picasso is never less than watchable, but it's also a cinematic paradox, a movie that works to capture Picasso from every angle yet somehow misses the fire in his belly.

Latest Merchant Ivory production (produced with David Wolper) is a winner in spite of relatively modern look to the film.

Surviving Picasso is quite well made and easy enough to watch, but it's not noticeably challenging or involving.

The movie breaks down into anecdotes that don't flow or build, and everything is narrated by the Gilot character.

A big, silly movie about the famed goatish painter that stars the nearly perfect Anthony Hopkins.

This movie is a dreary endurance test.

Not a movie that needs to exist, but it passes the time, and at least Hopkins manages to look like Picasso at odd moments.

Surviving Picasso falters in its careless structure.