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We Have a Pope(Habemus Papam)

✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Italy, France · 2011
1h 42m
Director Nanni Moretti
Starring Michel Piccoli, Nanni Moretti, Margherita Buy, Jerzy Stuhr
Genre Comedy, Drama

The newly-elected Pope suffers a panic attack just as he is about to greet the faithful for the first time. His advisors, unable to convince him he is the right man for the job, call on a renowned therapist -- who also happens to be an atheist.

Stream We Have a Pope

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

50

Variety by

The results veer between occasional smiles and outright pretension, with only Piccoli's mastery transcending the material.

70

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

What really grips the new movie, for all its amused glances at Swiss Guards and ceremonial pomp, is the prospect of a single soul in crisis. [9 April 2012, p.85]

80

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

Meticulous staging and Piccoli's world-weary presence balance any silliness, making the issues here feel relevant and real. The method is not pointed political satire but gentle enlightenment.

40

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

The satire becomes more scattershot and strangely cuddlesome (didja know sequestered holy men enjoy socializing and playing sports, just like us?), while the usually great Piccoli-saddled with a ridiculously contrived failed-actor backstory-comes off like an unholy mix of Gérard Depardieu and Robin Williams at their sad-puppiest. That's some cinematic blasphemy, Moretti.

50

Village Voice by Melissa Anderson

Until the potent concluding scene, the humor and shallow profundities of We Have a Pope pivot on the cuteness of geriatrics, especially when they're spiking a volleyball in slo-mo.

50

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

It's a shame that a movie about the pope as a man shows such scant fascination with the actual papacy - or with humanity, for that matter.

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