75
A strange and convoluted film that is as rewarding as a Dylan song, and just as perplexing.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
30
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
An unholy, incoherent mess.
50
San Francisco Chronicle by Edward Guthmann
A messy, ambitious comedy.
20
Dylan's performance doesn't offer any clues. He's an icon and he delivers an icon's performance, literally: He could easily have been replaced by piece of wood with his face painted on it. That distance also means he remains more or less untouched by the embarrassment going on around him, even though it's largely his own creation.
50
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Requires tremendous restraint not to conclude that this entertainingly apocalyptic mess is about nothing, since it may well be about everything. But I doubt it.
40
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Though Dylan shuffles through the dramatic sequences like a dessicated mummy, the music sequences are strikingly vibrant -- he's never looked worse or sounded better.
40
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
Bob Dylan might have been wrong when he sang that "there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all." His new movie, although a complete narrative mess, is a thoroughly Dylanesque escapade.
50
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
It's only when the film attempts to express its ideas in spoken English that logic dissolves into a muddle that would test the most rabid Dylanologist.
40
Dallas Observer by Robert Wilonsky
The film strains for some kind of meaning, but asks you to do the work it can't and won't perform on its own.
80
See it in one glorious shot, grab as much from it as you can and run like hell. I say that not because I hated Masked & Anonymous, but because I loved it.