Here’s what critics are saying about Timothée Chalamet’s new Bob Dylan biopic

Not everyone is enamoured with Timothée Chalamet’s latest film A Complete Unknown, according to recent reviews.

The Wonka and Call Me by Your Name star is playing folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s biopic A Complete Unknown. Based on Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!, it is getting mixed reviews.

The film follows Dylan’s career from his arrival in New York in 1961 to his controversial concert at the Newport Folk Festival four years later, and charts his intimate relationships and restlessness with the folk movement.

Edward Norton and Elle Fanning also star, as Dylan crosses paths with other singing superstars such as Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash.

A look at Dylan’s life has hit screens before, including in gay director Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There.

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What are the critics saying about A Complete Unknown?

A Complete Unknown currently has a 74 per cent tomatometer critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 66 reviews.

While some reviewers call the film a triumph and praise Chalamet’s performance, others criticise the formulaic structure and overly glossy approach. 

Writing for AV Club, Tomris Laffly describes Chalamet as a generational talent, just like Dylan, adding: “He sings and talks like him, with that raspy slur and nasal nonchalance, and nails his one-of-a-kind intonation.

“This is no traditional biopic performance where an actor disappears into the role. Instead, Chalamet goes to a place several octaves deeper. His performance is both startlingly accurate and something playfully off-kilter.”

Mashable’s Kristy Puchko agrees, saying: “Chalamet effortlessly flits about from stage to motorcycle ride to crummy hotel room, embracing the rogue poet and his indulgences at every turn. [His] movie-star charm smooths some of the rough edges, but his performance smartly allows Dylan’s tenacious self-centeredness to sting.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian’s chief film critic Peter Bradshaw describes the star as “a hypnotic Dylan, performing the tracks himself and fabricating to a really impressive degree that stoner-hungover birdsong”.

He goes on to say: “Interestingly, the story, despite the classic music-biopic tropes that Mangold did so much to popularise, does not conform to the classic rise-fall-learning-experience-comeback format. It’s all rise, but troubled and unclear.”

However, David Jenkins, gave the film just two stars out of a possible five on Little White Lies. “It’s been made for the sole purpose of visualising a short stretch of pop history and creating a glossy, unnecessary record of fact,” he wrote.

“There’s no arc, few compelling characters, no coherent drama or sense of lessons being learned, wisdom imparted and difficult emotions grappled with.”

And John Nugent told Empire readers that the film struggles to highlight a new perspective on Dylan. “For a story about a poetic genius, it struggles to find something fresh to say,” he warned. “The film doesn’t claim to understand Dylan, and suggests Dylan might not understand himself, either. That title, it seems, is literal.”

Pitchfork’s Madison Bloom wasn’t too impressed either, saying the film was “content to indulge in the most shop-worn tropes of musical biopics”, while Clarisse Loughrey, in the Independent, criticised the film for playing it too easy, with the result that “Chalamet is left without much of a vessel [into which] to pour his passions”.

Caryn James tells BBC website readers that while “Timmy is brilliant and completely believable”, the film was disappointingly conventional film… flattened by its safe, unimaginative script”.

A Complete Unknown is due to open in the US on Christmas Day and should be in UK cinemas from 17 January.

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