50
As a ravishingly photographed, high-minded meditation on the potential of art and therapy to exorcise the vilest sort of psychological poison, it is positively riotous -- an Everest of idiocy.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
Suggests that had young Adolf Hitler managed to get his art show, the Holocaust might never have happened. This seems absurd, not to say insensitive.
70
Dallas Observer by Gregory Weinkauf
Pits good taste against rousing intellectual provocation, and, happily, allows both to win.
38
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
A serious and thoughtful movie that probably does not mean to trivialize the Holocaust and blame the victim. But it is playing with fire nevertheless.
50
What does make the film disturbing is the way in which it positions Hitler as a mere mouthpiece for what was already in the air, a role he was convinced to play after suffering one disappointment too many at the hands of Jews like Rothman.
30
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Just because people are objecting to Max for all the wrong reasons doesn't make it a good film, and it's not. It's a bizarre curiosity memorable mainly for the way it fritters away its potentially interesting subject matter via a banal script, unimpressive acting and indifferent direction.
30
Quirky, unsatisfying portrait.
70
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
Noah Taylor does startlingly well by this role, but the conceit behind the film is a bizarre piece of wish-fulfillment.
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Rick Groen
The whole film occupies pretty much the same continuuum -- glimmers of intelligence followed by moments of outright hysteria punctuated by bouts of sheer haplessness.
60
The film is ultimately too glib in its suggestion that Hitler's discovering his career path was a matter of sheerest chance, even an accident.