
Variety
The script represents a too-tame middle ground, which gives the unfortunate impression that perhaps the filmmakers want us to empathize with this icky romance.
Full reviewKevin Kline is legendary big-screen swashbuckler Errol Flynn in this end-of-days biography. Follows his romance with teen starlet Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning) who snuck into Warner Brothers studios with a fake birth certificate claiming she was 18 – when she was in fact 15. Co-stars Susan Sarandon as Beverly's understanding mother Florence, as well as Max Casella (Inside Llewyn Davis) as filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.
"In October 1959, when actor Errol Flynn died of a heart attack at the age of fifty, his reputation as a legendary roué was already entrenched in the mind of a scandal-loving public. When that same public learned that Flynn had died in the arms of a seventeen-year-old starlet named Beverly Aadland, the frenzied avalanche of publicity was unprecedented. The story of their May-December romance is stylishly captured here in all of its Old Hollywood glory... When Flynn first pursues her, Beverly is hesitant; it is her ambitious mother, Florence (Susan Sarandon), her own dreams of stardom shattered, who encourages the relationship. Given his troubled past with women and the law, Flynn adopts the principle of "hide in plain sight," and enlists Florence as a third wheel, maintaining a facade of propriety. Despite their age difference, Beverly and Errol find themselves to be kindred spirits." (Toronto Film Festival)
LessThe script represents a too-tame middle ground, which gives the unfortunate impression that perhaps the filmmakers want us to empathize with this icky romance.
Full reviewThe film has real compassion for its tabloid subjects but doesn't quite make the case for what was especially poignant or remarkable about this doomed love affair.
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