42
This material could make for a powerful work, but Viceroy’s House is certainly not it.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
Time Out London by Dave Calhoun
At the human level, this is shallow, and Chadha clumsily fuses political drama with romantic melodrama.
50
Such a sprawling, two-pronged saga may well have been better served in television miniseries format.
20
Director Gurinder Chadha (“It’s a Wonderful Afterlife,” “Bend It Like Beckham”) attempts to explore the cataclysmic human costs of the Partition without humanizing any of the Indian characters. And so we’re offered, on the 70th anniversary of the Partition (give or take a couple of weeks), another film about how brown suffering makes nice white people sad.
38
The only thing that offsets the film's self-negating revisionism are the scenes involving Gillian Anderson vicereine.
60
Fascinating story, flawed telling.
60
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Viceroy’s House is no very profound work, but it is a nimble and watchable period drama.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton
Chadha has distilled a fascinating and epic true story into a starchy, stuffy, sanitized period piece that never fully engages on an emotional or educational level.
60
There’s only so much in this desperately involved historical saga that Chadha and her screenwriters are able to grapple with.
80
Screen International by Wendy Ide
One of the main strengths of Chadha’s approach is the way she weaves the historical detail into the richly textured story with such a light touch.