61
Metascore
15 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbySmashingly funny...This To Be or Not to Be scarcely misses a comic beat right from the opening sequence.
- 90VarietyVarietyVery funny stuff, indeed.
- 80IGNIGNThe cast (including Brooks, Anne Brancroft, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Matheson and Oscar-nominee Charles Durning) does their best to keep the laughs flowing.
- 80Time OutTime OutJohnson may not quite have Lubitsch's lightness of touch, but he puts an excellent cast through their paces with great verve, and the charm is as potent as ever.
- 75Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertTo Be or Not To "Be works as well as a story as any Brooks film since "Young Frankenstein," and darned if there isn't a little sentiment involved as the impresario and his wife, after years of marriage, surprise each other by actually falling in love.
- 75New York Daily NewsNew York Daily NewsBrooks works overtime finding laughs more in line with his rambunctious kind of comedy...Only in Anne Bancroft's luscious, Lombard-light performance of Brooks' better (but parenthetically billed) half do you get a hint of this film's smart and stylish origin.
- 67The A.V. ClubNathan RabinThe A.V. ClubNathan RabinAn extraordinarily faithful—though schmaltzy and ultimately pointless— 1983 remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 farce.
- 50TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineThe plot is much the same as in the Ernst Lubitsch original, with everything played for laughs and Brooks at his funniest in impersonations of Nazis. What's missing is the relevance of the 1942 film, released while Germany occupied Poland.
- 50Miami HeraldBill CosfordMiami HeraldBill CosfordIf anything, the 1983 To Be or Not to Be is more tasteless, while a great deal less engaging, than the original. [16 Dec 1983, p.E20]
- 30Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrI can't remember another film that took so little care with the details of ambience: the cruddy sets and flat, underworked sound track drain any sense of life from the project, to the point where it looks like the cheapest kind of TV—canned theater.