Rent I'm Not There (2007)

For Dylan fans only - I'm Not There review by JD

Who would have thought that if 4 actors of the caliber of Ledger, Bale Gere and Blanchett played the same (male) person that the female would give the best performance. A bit of panto perhaps? The name Bob Dylan is never referred to which feels as if the film couldn't afford the royalties. Most of the film shows Dylan as a heavy smoking arty intellectual who turns most questions round to the enquirer. Hardly riveting stuff. I found it pretty boring even though I liked Dylan in the 70's. He is hardly relevant now and the film should have tried harder to appeal to those of us who are not disciples.

Elusive matter that's too impressionistic to hit the emotional beats - I'm Not There review by AER

Wearing it's artistic flourishes on its face, this is a vague flurry of interesting ideas yet it fails to get to the heart of the matter. And the job at hand is to give us a portrait of Bob Dylan. This gives us six played by six different actors with playing six different Bob Dylans (with a different name each). The storylines are scattered in to the blend in a cohesive order - sometimes a fractured narrative can work really well here, but sadly Todd Haynes' I'm Not There holds us at arm's length. Its a very passive experience and ultimately unenlightening. I'm not much of a Dylan fan but I do like most of Todd Haynes' films, so was saddened to find one I haven't enjoyed at all. I was bored, baffled, lost and only got the smallest glimmers of wonder from it. Well-made, a bold experiment but a misstep for me. Sorry.

The philosophical coherence of a headless chicken - I'm Not There review by Gwydion

We were supposed to see it as something insightful into US life and 1960s radicalism.

I saw a set of banalities.

Some quite nice performances, but was the original serious, even?

How does it feel

To love and electric eel

And borrow anything you cannot steal!