50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz
Because while Stardust covers the period of Bowie’s life just before he released his breakthrough 1972 album, the film doesn’t feature a single track from the record. Or any Bowie music at all.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
Stardust is a mostly listless odyssey, its lack of excitement compounded by the absence of Bowie's music.
30
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
The director, Gabriel Range, who wrote the movie with Christopher Bell, opted to press on, even after he was denied permission to use Bowie’s songs. They might not have helped much, however.
25
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
As played by actor-musician Johnny Flynn, the Halloween-costume Bowie we meet in Stardust is a miserable, charmless wannabe. Which is to say that the film fails where a single photo of this most chameleonic of music legends would succeed: It makes Bowie boring.
58
While there are flashes of originality in the film’s script — which quite artfully builds on Bowie’s worries with a distinctly personal edge — most of it is relatively straightforward, never as psychedelic or sophisticated as its opening shot, which finds Flynn stuck in spacesuit and unable to engage with the world around him.
50
Ultimately, it's bland, not bold, and achingly absent of enchantment.
40
Los Angeles Times by Michael Ordona
The new David Bowie biopic Stardust could be marketed as “Bowie as you’ve never seen him,” but it feels like “Bowie as no one ever saw him.”
50
The movie gives us only a small taste of it, but it’s enough to whet your appetite: for a Bowie biopic that captures this cracked actor in all his funhouse-mirror rock ‘n’ roll glory.
0
I saw this movie last Wednesday, and I still feel like I’m watching it, like its dry and stuttering dynamic hasn’t yet ended, like I’ll never hear a real Bowie song again. Someone commit me before I’m forced to don my famous alter ego, Lights Camera Jackson, to cope with my insanity.
48
Flynn’s ferocious commitment to the role is something to admire, even if we’re not completely convinced.