Argylle: What The Worst Critic Reviews Said About The Henry Cavill Movie
Matthew Vaughn's newest spy flick "Argylle" opens on February 2 — but just before its release, critics aren't showing the movie a whole lot of love. In fact, they're really dunking on it.
The film — which stars Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, and Henry Cavill — was the subject of some particularly interesting Taylor Swift-related rumors ahead of its theatrical debut, but now that the reviews are rolling in, assessments of this over-the-top action movie are certainly the main headline. So what did critics think of "Argylle?" Not a lot.
To kick things off, Alissa Wilkinson from The New York Times spoke to the ephemeral nature of time. "What you're left with as the credits roll is just the realization that time keeps marching on — and you've just lost 139 minutes of it," she remarked. Jonathan Romney at Financial Times might have been slightly gentler but was still obviously not a fan, writing, "For all its multi-layered clever-dickery, 'Argylle' is essentially a single idea pursued at relentless pace and extravagant expense."
Over at The Boston Globe, Odie Henderson pointed out something a lot of casual viewers might not know — that the film is related to the popular "Kingsman" franchise but doesn't even come close to matching its heights. "Apple TV+ paid $200 million for this entry in the 'Kingsman' universe, which explains the overhype," Henderson said. "They obviously want their money back. Don't give it to them." He also suggested viewers looking for a "CGI-kitty action movie" should instead check out "Keanu," a 2016 comedy starring — and made by — Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key.
Did critics like Argylle? No, they did not.
Over at Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson asked a straightforward yet difficult question. "What went wrong here? It's probably just plain old exhaustion," he commented. "'Argylle' marks the fifth film that Vaughn has made in this mode (I'm counting Kick-Ass), and he seems out of tricks."
The overall consensus from critics seemed to be that the movie felt tired, strange, and lifeless with no real core. That's essentially what Hoai-Tran Bui said at Inverse, writing, "It's a nesting doll of a movie — a glib, winking, referential spy comedy that layers twist upon twist on top of each other to hide the fact there's nothing at the center." Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com seemed to agree with this assessment, saying that the movie was clearly part of the spy genre but couldn't rise to the level of a single one of its contemporaries. "It sputters as it attempts to reengineer the mechanics of better films," he wrote.
That said, Katie Walsh at Tribune News Service was extraordinarily blunt, bringing the film's massive budget into it: "It's remarkable really, 'Argylle' has bone-deep structural issues on a fundamental level, but it is also a failure of directorial execution from top to bottom, resulting in what has to be one of the most expensive worst movies ever made."
According to critics, Argylle is unfunny, saddled with a bad script, and poorly directed
Some critics, like Manuel Betancourt of The A.V. Club, made the point that "Argylle" suffers from some relatively common cinematic issues. "Argylle' does feel more like a writerly exercise in how to pen a spy caper in the 21st century, when self-deprecating irony itself needs to be offered up within quotation marks, finely straddling the line between an earnest laugh and a sardonic stare," he wrote. As for Kevin Maher at The Times U.K., he zeroed in on one "joke" the movie really seemed to lean on: "It's a testament to the low-grade lethargy that informs so much of the writing here that his character template never evolved further than 'Henry Cavill + wacky haircut = hilarity.'"
At Daily Telegraph UK, Robbie Collin made a solid joke that, if critics are to be believed, is funnier than most things found in "Argylle," writing, "It feels like an achievement of sorts that while no one in 'Argylle' can actually pronounce the name Argylle properly, this would not make a list of the 50 most annoying things about the film." Meanwhile, Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail kept things simple, straight, and to the point: "One of the most chaotically stupid action movies to torture audiences in ages."
To critics, Argylle felt like a commercial, a humorless exercise, or just a failure in filmmaking
Ultimately, critics declared that "Argylle" is just... sort of a mess. Nicholas Barber at BBC.com specified some of the movie's biggest messes, writing, "Everywhere you look, there are details that need to be added, plot holes that need to be filled, and jokes that need to be improved." Nick Schager of The Daily Beast went after the movie's attempt at humor and its star-studded cast, musing, "Its comic touch almost as heavy-handed as its slow-motion-drenched action is dull, it seems primarily designed to answer the question, "How many movie stars can one fiasco squander?"
At The Hollywood Reporter, Leslie Felperin pointed out the fact that "Argylle" barely even feels like a movie, but instead some sort of advertisement for a much more glamorous lifestyle. "It all starts to feel like one of those very expensive, very elaborate commercials for a pseudo-luxury product you don't want to buy — a perfume perhaps, or some car," she observed.
In the end, perhaps David Fear at Rolling Stone put it best; as Shakespeare said, brevity is the soul of wit. "'Argylle' is a bad movie," he wrote. "A very, very bad movie."