Metacritic reviews

This was a movie that respected its audience and respected its genuine desire to be well and intelligently entertained.

A ripping, gripping yarn, a surprisingly erotic love story and, as it happens, a premonition of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.

As charming as the C.S. Forester novel on which it is based, The African Queen is top flight entertainment, delightful, different, always interesting. It is filled with excitement and adventure and sparked by superlative performances from Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.

An engrossing motion picture. Just offbeat enough in story, locale and star teaming of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn to stimulate the imagination. It is a picture with an unassuming warmth and naturalness that can have a bright boxoffice chance

A film that has everything--adventure, humor, spectacular photography and superb performances.

A slick job of movie hoodwinking with a thoroughly implausible romance, set in a frame of wild adventure that is as whopping as its tale of off-beat love. And the main tone and character of it are in the area of the well-disguised spoof...Mr. Huston merits credit for putting this fantastic tale on a level of sly, polite kidding and generally keeping it there, while going about the happy business of engineering excitement and visual thrills.

Bogart slyly draws upon his past performances here—men of weary-eyed cynicism and faded idealism—to give Charlie’s rudderless existence an extra-textual charge.

A perfect ensemble of cast, photography and screenplay are all subtly handled through Huston's direction, bringing out Bogart and Hepburn's performances beautifully.

Grand, propulsive.

One of Bogart’s best acting performances. It shows his range – although having normally played an “alpha” character, here he is easily manipulated by the strong-willed Rose.