Prizzi's Honor (1985) - Critic Reviews

To say the film is the treasure of the year would be to bad-mouth it in this disastrous season. Prizzi's Honor would be the vastly original centerpiece of a great year. It's a rich, dense character comedy in which Huston, working from a screenplay Richard Condon and Janet Roach adapted from Condon's novel, cocks a playful but unblinking eye at love, family loyalty and the togetherness of a happy marriage--Sicilian style.

100

The Guardian

Probably the funniest mobster movie ever...A sublime meld of black satire, high camp and happy farce.

100

Gene Siskel Chicago Tribune

This film would be a winner any time of the year. It`s a classic piece of moviemaking that I plan on seeing again very soon.

100

TV Guide Magazine

This was the penultimate film from the ailing great director. It is also one of his best.

88

Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times

This is the most bizarre comedy in many a month, a movie so dark, so cynical and so funny that perhaps only Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner could have kept straight faces during the love scenes. They do.

80

Time Out

The movie's success lies in Huston's very sure manipulation of mood and tone, somehow connecting black comedy, tongue-in-cheek acting, heavy irony, and even high camp into a coherent story.

80

Variety

Picture is a stretch for Nicholson, who speaks in a street-tough, accented gangster-ese that initially takes some getting used to, but shortly becomes totally convincing. Turner manages to use her loveliness to jolting results.

60

William Thomas Empire

Not one of Nicholson's best, but an enjoyable comedy nonetheless.

50

Bill Cosford Miami Herald

Someone involved with Prizzi's Honor, the new film from John Huston and starring Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner, doubtless thinks it's a fine satire, a comedy so black it will have us all squirming. There's no other explanation for the long stretches of time the movie spends on "idle," all that potential power, going nowhere. [14 June 1985, p.D1]

40

Dave Kehr Chicago Reader

Huston does a reverse take on the material, underplaying the grotesque situation until it turns into a parody on the problems of the average working couple, but the pacing is so lugubrious that the laughs never materialize.