Lolita

2.33
    Lolita
    1997

    Synopsis

    Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

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    Cast

    • Jeremy IronsHumbert Humbert
    • Dominique SwainDolores "Lolita" Haze
    • Melanie GriffithCharlotte Haze
    • Frank LangellaClare Quilty
    • Suzanne ShepherdMiss Pratt
    • Keith ReddinReverend Rigger
    • Erin J. DeanMona
    • Joan GloverMiss LaBone
    • Pat PerkinsLouise
    • Ed GradyDr. Melinik

    Recommendations

    • 80

      Salon

      For all of their vaunted (and, it turns out, false) fidelity to Nabokov, Lyne and Schiff have made a pretty, gauzy Lolita that replaces the book's cruelty and comedy with manufactured lyricism and mopey romanticism.
    • 80

      The New York Times

      The film's master stroke is its understanding that this is Humbert's story, told in his own lyrical voice, from his own passionate, sad, tortured perspective.
    • 75

      ReelViews

      In many ways, the concept underlying Lolita is more provocative than the actual material, which tends to be a bit long-winded. This is more the fault of the book than of Lyne's approach.
    • 75

      Christian Science Monitor

      Vladimir Nabokov's novel helped open society's eyes to the evils of pedophilia in the 1950s, and this pensive adaptation renews the warning for a later generation.
    • 70

      New York Magazine (Vulture)

      The new version of Lolita, released at last, turns out to be a beautifully made, melancholy, and rather touching account of a doomed love affair between a full-grown man and a very young woman.
    • 50

      Austin Chronicle

      However, Lyne (whose sexually exploitative works include such popular box-office fare as "Flashdance," "9 1/2 Weeks," "Fatal Attraction," and "Indecent Proposal") has turned in a Lolita that is remarkably tame and tasteful. This is a Lolita for the English Lit crowd rather than the raincoat crowd.
    • 50

      Los Angeles Times

      Except for a memorably haunted performance by Jeremy Irons as the conflicted Humbert Humbert, what the new version lacks most of all is inspiration.
    • 50

      Chicago Reader

      Though Adrian Lyne's clodhopper direction, underlined by a mushy Ennio Morricone score, predictably runs the gamut from soft-core porn in the manner of David Hamilton to hectoring close-ups, this is perhaps Lyne's best movie after Jacob's Ladder--a genuinely disturbing (if far from literary) adaptation of Nabokov's extraordinary novel, written by former journalist Stephen Schiff and starring, predictably, Jeremy Irons.

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