60
Desplechin’s film is a modest but very passable affair.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Amalric's impish dexterity and Del Toro's mild catatonia make for a memorable mismatch, but Jimmy P.'s profound slow burn might be too clinical for some to consider dramatic.
20
The Guardian by Catherine Shoard
Scenes have a habit of stopping at any second, with or without whopping soundtrack.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
The whole project is saved largely thanks to the subtext of ethnic discrimination that runs through the film, and two riveting central performances, which overcome a wobbly start to find emotional balance by the final reel.
63
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
Too often Jimmy P. seems to struggle in making its interesting ideas apparent, leaving them stranded beneath the dry surface of an otherwise ordinary procedural.
30
It’s just boring – and boring in a way that apparently has no endgame.
80
Del Toro and Amalric’s concentrated performances — the former resigned and shell-shocked, the latter agitated and servile — have an anguished grandeur.
50
The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth
The problem is that the movie becomes more focused on diagnosis than character, and so what eventually unfolds is a meandering picture that only too late in the game leans toward highlighting any kind of thematic undercurrent while introducing romantic interests for the leads that do little but pad out an already too long running time.
25
Del Toro overdoes the anguish to the point of looking like he’s playing advanced constipation, and the film, by France’s Arnaud Desplechin, gets stuck in an endless series of therapy scenes built around cheesy re-enactments of Jimmy P’s dreams.
70
Jimmy P. is never better than when its two leads share the screen, a relationship all the more resonant and moving for Desplechin’s refusal to make it cutesy or contrived.