57
Metascore
22 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinPermanent Midnight is as enveloping as it is darkly cautionary, thanks to the effectively varied layers of Mr. Veloz's direction and the bitter intensity Mr. Stiller brings to his central role.
- 75Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe movie gets credit for not making the high life seem colorful or funny. It is not. It is boring, because when the drugs are there they simply clear the pain and allow the mind to focus on getting more drugs.
- 75Washington PostMichael O'SullivanWashington PostMichael O'SullivanDespite some small narrative flaws, though, Stiller alone is reason to keep watching. It's a brave, scary and antic tour de force from a performer who, over the past few years, has been slowly banging his head against the glass wall of typecasting. In Permanent Midnight, the clown finally shatters the barrier and comes out the other side an actor.
- 63San Francisco ChroniclePeter StackSan Francisco ChroniclePeter StackBen Stiller seems the perfect actor to play Hollywood writer- turned-junkie Jerry Stahl in Permanent Midnight. He's got that bitter humor, the intense eyes betraying an inner life of pain. And he comes off as pathetic. The trouble is that it's hard to care -- even though the film is well-acted, artfully shot and at times haunting in its bleakness.
- 60The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsThe A.V. ClubKeith PhippsThe framing device, which has Stiller recounting his tale to a fellow recovering addict (Maria Bello) over the course of a weekend sex session, stops Permanent Midnight dead in its tracks every time it pops up, but Stiller alone is almost enough reason to check out the film.
- 50TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghTV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghThis cautionary tale, complete with the swank cars, cool clothes and depraved babes that inevitably accompany degradation Hollywood style, is based on former sitcom scribe Jerry Stahl's lurid tell-all memoir of his descent into heroin addiction. Under the witty surface, the moral seems to be "The devil made me do it." Even by sitcom standards, that's old.
- 50Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanPermanent Midnight never shows us who Jerry Stahl was before he began shooting junk, and so we have no real stake in what the drugs did to him. He’s a case study in search of a movie.
- 50Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLos Angeles TimesKenneth TuranPermanent Midnight's Hollywood segments are clever and amusing, but the more Stahl's life unravels in his demeaning search for drugs, the more the film inevitably goes down along with it. Watching Stahl searching frantically for an unused vein in his neck with a baby fussing next to him (don't ask) may be unnerving, but it is far from irresistible.
- 50San Francisco ExaminerSan Francisco ExaminerDespite its subject - an addict's dark interior life - Permanent Midnight offers little in the way of character development and no jolting insight.