66
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 88Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenOne of Cassavetes’s greatest and most daring films.
- 83The A.V. ClubNathan RabinThe A.V. ClubNathan RabinJohn Cassavetes’ films ostensibly explore what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real, but his conception of stark, unvarnished reality sometimes feels awfully artificial.
- 80The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawA brilliantly textured film to be savoured.
- 80Time OutTime OutThe film’s relentless masculinity and shouty attitude is tempered by a disorientating, troubling sense of characters tragically adrift. Equally powerful as what we do see is what we don’t – jobs, families, kids, colleagues – as the entire film exists in a selfish interval from real, daily life.
- 80Village VoiceAndrew SarrisVillage VoiceAndrew SarrisHusbands confirms, if indeed any confirmation were needed, that John Cassavetes is one of the major American film-makers of the past decade, and one of the most tortured and turgid as well. [10 Dec 1970, p.69]
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineMost of Cassavetes's cinema verite films as a director are invariably accused (and with some justification) of being rambling, self-indulgent, and unfocused, but it is precisely those elements that make his best work so affecting and memorable, and Husbands, though deeply flawed, is one of the finest examples of that.
- 60The Observer (UK)The Observer (UK)Highly uneven, painfully drawn-out, deeply sincere, wildly misogynistic and at times agonisingly tedious. It is also intermittently brilliant, with moments of piercing honesty. There is, however, not a single memorable line of dialogue or anything that might pass for wit.
- 60Chicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumChicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumThis 1970 film is John Cassavetes's most irritating, full of the male braggadocio and bluster that mar even some of his best work. But it's impossible to dismiss or shake off entirely, and the performances—as is usually the case in his work—are potent.
- 50Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertHusbands has all the confidence of Cassavetes' masterpiece, Faces, but few of the other qualities of the film that preceded it. It has good intentions, I suppose, but it is an artistic disaster and only fitfully interesting on less ambitious levels.
- 40The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyLike Faces, which was rambling and funny and accurate, and which I admired, the new film demonstrates a concern for panicky, inarticulate squares that is so unpatronizing that it comes close to being reverential in a solemnly religious sense. Husbands, however, also puts one's tolerance of simulated cinéma vérité to the test. It is almost unbearably long.