40
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
While Mr. Laaksonen devoted his life (1920-91) to challenging conventions, the film is committed to honoring them.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
58
The Playlist by Bradley Warren
While often hamstrung by genre conventions, particularly in the picture’s first half, Tom of Finland is a passable entry into the LGBT film canon and largely successful in selling the subcultural relevance of the eponymous artist’s beefcake drawings.
50
The film is jammed with incident and detail but there’s little flow to the storytelling.
40
Tom of Finland is a film about a man who was famous for very dirty drawings, but it is unfortunately restricted by a dehydrated kind of good taste from ever being very dirty or very sexy.
60
Having taken such pains to establish Tom’s Finnish background and its attendant dangers, Karukoski hurtles through the sketchy American section without exploring any of its crucial issues in sufficient depth.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson
A good, strong movie, but never threatens to be great. One salivates at the adventurous directions the film could have explored.
50
Its lively finale is heartening, given the patience that Laaksonen was obliged to exercise before he could live his life out in the open. But the insights of the movie are too scant for much of a real impression to take hold of the viewer.
80
If the imagery is less racy than TOF fans may be used to, Pekka Strang’s quiet turn as Laaksonen has a simmering power.
60
Tom of Finland is imbued with playfulness but not the cutting edge, and bravery, of its eponymous leading man.
60
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
An interesting film rather than an engrossing one, and it’s hard not to wish it was a little more energised by its subject’s enduringly transgressive spirit.