Magnolia Paul Thomas Anderson

Box office

Magnolia initially opened in a limited release on December 17, 1999, in seven theaters grossing $193,604. The film was given a wide release on January 7, 2000, in 1,034 theaters grossing $5.7 million on its opening weekend. It eventually grossed $22.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $26.0 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $48.5 million, against a budget of $37 million.[27]

Critical response

There is no film ... EVER ... that has made me think and made me feel and made me question like Magnolia. It made me laugh and cry and squirm and giggle with nervous laughter. Yet, I can't deny that five years later my life is changed because I've seen Magnolia. I sit here at my computer getting goosebumps at the tenderness of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

—Film critic Richard Propes on the impact of Magnolia.[28]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 216 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "An eruption of feeling that's as overwhelming as it is overwrought, Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia reaches a fevered crescendo and sustains it thanks to its fearlessly committed ensemble."[29] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[30] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C-" on an A+ to F scale.[31]

USA Today gave the film three and a half stars out of four and called it "the most imperfect of the year's best movies".[32] Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film four stars out of four, praising it in both of his reviews from 2000 and 2008, and as his second favorite film of 1999, behind Being John Malkovich. He said in the first review, "Magnolia is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy".[33] After rewatching it in 2008, he added the film to his 'Great Movies' list.[34] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" rating, praising Cruise's performance: "It's with Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey, a slick televangelist of penis power, that the filmmaker scores his biggest success, as the actor exorcises the uptight fastidiousness of Eyes Wide Shut ... Like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, this cautiously packaged movie star is liberated by risky business".[35] The Independent said that the film was "limitless. And yet some things do feel incomplete, brushed-upon, tangential. Magnolia does not have the last word on anything. But is superb".[36] Kenneth Turan, in his review for the Los Angeles Times, praised Tom Cruise's performance: "Mackey gives Cruise the chance to cut loose by doing amusing riffs on his charismatic superstar image. It's great fun, expertly written and performed, and all the more enjoyable because the self-parody element is unexpected".[37] In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, "In the case of Magnolia, I think Mr. Anderson has taken us to the water's edge without plunging in. I admire his ambition and his very eloquent camera movements, but if I may garble something Lenin once said one last time, 'You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs'."[38]

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "But when that group sing-along arrives, Magnolia begins to self-destruct spectacularly. It's astonishing to see a film begin this brilliantly only to torpedo itself in its final hour," but went on to say that the film "was saved from its worst, most reductive ideas by the intimacy of the performances and the deeply felt distress signals given off by the cast".[39] Philip French, in his review for The Observer, wrote, "But is the joyless universe he (Anderson) presents any more convincing than the Pollyanna optimism of traditional sitcoms? These lives are somehow too stunted and pathetic to achieve the level of tragedy".[40] The Time critic Richard Schickel wrote: "The result is a hard-striving, convoluted movie, which never quite becomes the smoothly reciprocating engine Anderson (who did Boogie Nights) would like it to be."[41]

In an interview, Ingmar Bergman mentioned Magnolia as an example of the "strength of American cinema".[42] Roger Ebert included the work in his "Great Movies" list in November 2008, saying, "As an act of filmmaking, it draws us in and doesn't let go."[43] Total Film magazine placed it at number 4 in their list of 50 Best Movies in Total Film's lifetime.[44] In 2008, it was named the 89th greatest movie of all time by Empire magazine in its issue of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.[45] It received eight votes – five from critics and three from directors – in the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound polls.[46]

Following the film's release, Anderson said: "I really feel ... That Magnolia is, for better or worse, the best movie I'll ever make."[47] Later he came to consider it overlong;[48] when asked in interview what he would tell himself to do if he could go back to when he shot the film, his response was "Chill The Fuck Out and Cut Twenty Minutes."[49]

Accolades

• In 2004, the American Film Institute nominated the song "Save Me" from this film for AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Songs.[75]