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Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992)

Metacritic reviews

Basic Instinct

43

Metascore

28 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
  • 75
    Rolling StonePeter Travers
    Rolling StonePeter Travers
    The film is for horny pups of all ages who relish the memory of reading stroke books under the covers with a flashlight. Verhoeven has spent $49 million to reproduce that dirty little thrill on the big screen.
  • 67
    Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
    Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
    Beneath its heavy-breathing fripperies, though, Basic Instinct is mechanical and routine, a muddle of Hitchcockian red herrings and standard cop-thriller ballistics.
  • 63
    USA TodayMike Clark
    USA TodayMike Clark
    The film never makes total sense, but at its best (the first half-hour), it comes closer to solidly junky titillation than the hapless Final Analysis. [20 Mar 1992, Life, p.1D]
  • 50
    TimeRichard Schickel
    TimeRichard Schickel
    This reflects its fundamental flaw of arrogance, a smug faith in the ability of its own speed, smartness and luxe to wow the yokels.
  • 50
    Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
    Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
    The film is like a crossword puzzle. It keeps your interest until you solve it. Then it's just a worthless scrap with the spaces filled in.
  • 50
    TV Guide Magazine
    TV Guide Magazine
    The worst things about Basic Instinct, though, are the explicit "love" scenes. They're supposed to contribute to a heady equation in which sex, violence and psychology are fused; instead, they're gratuitous, exploitative, and entirely unerotic.
  • 40
    Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
    Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
    A reminder of the difference between exhilaration and exhaustion, between tension and hysteria, between eroticism and exhibitionism. The line may be fine, but it is real enough to separate the great thrillers from the also-rans. And Basic Instinct is not a great thriller.
  • 33
    Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
    Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
    Verhoeven's lurid thriller has moments of welcome self-parody, but most of the action manages to be sensationalistic, homophobic, and tedious at the same time. [20 Mar 1992, Arts, p.12]
  • 25
    Chicago TribuneDave Kehr
    Chicago TribuneDave Kehr
    Verhoeven does not explore the dark side, but merely exploits it, and that makes all the difference in the world.
  • 20
    The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
    The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
    It's just one more dunk in the slime pit of exploitation. [13 Apr 1992, p.26]
  • See all 28 reviews on Metacritic.com
  • See all external reviews for Basic Instinct

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