Critics reviews

Avoiding the classic rise-and-fall narrative, Bogdanovich chronicles [Keaton's] entire life as one long sentence... But even with the wealth of archive footage, Bogdanovich never truly puts a crack in the facade of the man known as the Great Stone Face.

Hard-core Keatonites will be familiar with much of the material, although the clips of his later work in television and commercials are an uncommon delight; what the movie really deserves is an audience of younger fans.

Writer-director Peter Bogdanovich brings his formidable knowledge of movies to bear in this incisive portrait of Buster Keaton.

Mr. Bogdanovich sometimes falls back on hollow critic-speak, enthusing over the perfection and brilliance of gags that speak just fine for themselves. But his selections from well- and lesser-known Keaton films are illuminating and astute.

Peter Bogdanovich’s The Great Buster: A Celebration doesn’t break any new ground in explaining his work; aside from a welcome appreciation of the final years of his career, when the aging slapstick icon became an unlikely staple of TV commercials and teen beach-party movies, the case it argues for Keaton as a major filmmaker could have come straight out of the 1960s.

[Bogdanovich's] gloriously entertaining new Keaton documentary isn’t just an act of nostalgia, it’s an exhumation – an attempt at reappraisal and resurrection... His deeply knowledgeable voiceover provides at least half of the film’s charm.

While “The Great Buster: A Celebration” ...covers the arc of his life, it aims for simplicity, for a celebration of his unrivaled talents, and often fails to explore the complexity of the very man at its center.

Lovely and sharp-minded... [Bogdanovich's] swift and knowledgeable appreciation will well serve its fundamental aim of increasing the size of the Keaton fan club.

Though Bogdanovich honors that legacy he doesn’t always live up to it: You’ll leave the film knowing more about its subject than you did when you walked in, but there’s little here that feels like it couldn’t be found in one of the many other accounts of Keaton’s life and work.