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Created Jun 14, 2010 10:49PM PST • Edited Apr 22, 2023 08:21PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Barely OK 2.0

   Me and Orson Welles is a disappointing, amateurish effort from the heretofore redoubtable Richard Linklater. Sadly the writing and acting weigh down whatever directing talents Linklater brought to the production. Ironically, for a movie that celebrates acting, the acting is just OK.

4. Acting

   OK 2.5

   Zac Efron has yet to succeed in an adult role. Here he’s supposed to be 17, yet in an adult setting, and he proves insufficient to the task. Plus he and Claire Danes have no chemistry together.

   Christian McKay looks like Orson Welles, which is no complement since Welles had a face made for radio.

5. Male Stars OK 2.5

   Zac Efron & Christian McKay

6. Female Stars OK 2.5

   Claire Danes

7. Female Costars Barely OK 2.0

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

   Eddie Marsan & James Tupper

10. Film

    Barely OK 2.0

    Gifted great source material, the film’s rookie writers turned out a lame story full of dangling plot elements, inconsistent pacing and no particular tension. Wells would have been incensed.

11. Direction OK 2.5

    Linklater’s made more than his fair share of great, really great and perfect movies – Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, and School of Rock to name three. He’ll get his groove back.

12. Play Bad 1.0

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Good 3.0

    The scenes of the Caesar production give evidence to Welles’ genius.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.5

17. Sex Titillating 1.7

18. Violence Gentle 1.2

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    The Mercury Theatre’s 1937 Caesar really was a sensation: artistically, commercially, politically. Time magazine called it “a sinister tragedy of dictatorship,” saying the climax was “patterned after LIFE’s pictures of last summer’s Nazi Congress at Nurermberg.” Wow. That would be like someone today using theater or film to debunk the theocracy in Tehran. Pity that we don’t have our own Wells to do so.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0