Metacritic reviews

Meticulous staging and Piccoli's world-weary presence balance any silliness, making the issues here feel relevant and real. The method is not pointed political satire but gentle enlightenment.

Nanni Moretti's tender, funny and timely Vatican romp entertains, but lacks the director's customary bite.

What really grips the new movie, for all its amused glances at Swiss Guards and ceremonial pomp, is the prospect of a single soul in crisis. [9 April 2012, p.85]

Nanni Moretti's latest is a mixed bag that too often settles for easy, superficial laughs.

Piccoli in a role that relies on looks, gestures and very few words, does not hit an off note, making him into a silent, everyman figure.

The results veer between occasional smiles and outright pretension, with only Piccoli's mastery transcending the material.

Until the potent concluding scene, the humor and shallow profundities of We Have a Pope pivot on the cuteness of geriatrics, especially when they're spiking a volleyball in slo-mo.

It's a shame that a movie about the pope as a man shows such scant fascination with the actual papacy - or with humanity, for that matter.

The satire becomes more scattershot and strangely cuddlesome (didja know sequestered holy men enjoy socializing and playing sports, just like us?), while the usually great Piccoli-saddled with a ridiculously contrived failed-actor backstory-comes off like an unholy mix of Gérard Depardieu and Robin Williams at their sad-puppiest. That's some cinematic blasphemy, Moretti.

Nanni Moretti's new film is occasionally amusing, but is also a frustrating and directionless experience.