Movie · 1996 · History, Drama · 2h 15m · PG · English
Curator score: 1.8/10 (68.8K ratings)
Unforgotten, forever loved and adored.
Overview
The hit musical based on the life of Evita Duarte, an Argentinian actress who eventually became the wife of Argentinian president Juan Perón, and the most beloved and hated woman in Argentina.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.8/10
IMDb: 6.3/10
Letterboxd: 3.02/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 63%
Metacritic: 45
TMDB: 6.1/10
Director
Alan Parker
Production
Hollywood Pictures, Cinergi Pictures, Robert Stigwood Organization, Dirty Hands Productions
Cast
Madonna, Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce, Jimmy Nail, Victoria Sus, Julian Littman, Olga Merediz, Laura Pallas, Julia Worsley, María Luján Hidalgo, Servando Villamil, Andrea Corr, Peter Polycarpou, Gary Brooker, Maite Yerro, Adrià Collado, Gabriel Kraisman, Martín Drogo, Venesa Weis, Veronica Ferrari Risler
Where to watch
BroadwayHD
Curator Review
Verdict
A glossy, overstuffed musical biopic with real visual energy and a strong sense of spectacle, but its politics are muddled and the central performance divides viewers. It’s worth it if you want a big, stylized, emotionally heightened take on a controversial historical figure; less so if you want nuance or a fully convincing dramatic portrait.
Best for
fans of lavish movie musicals
viewers interested in political rise-and-fall stories
people who enjoy stylized, high-camp historical drama
audiences open to imperfect but ambitious adaptations
Skip if
you want a sober, nuanced biopic
you dislike sung-through musicals
you’re put off by uneven lead performances
you prefer intimate character studies over spectacle
Overview
Evita is the kind of movie that arrives in a blaze of confidence and never really stops moving. Alan Parker turns the story into a feverish pageant of ambition, image-making, and national myth, with big production numbers that keep the film from feeling like a static stage transfer. It’s polished, propulsive, and often genuinely thrilling as cinema, even when it’s clearly more interested in momentum than in political clarity.
Worth noting
The film’s biggest problem is that it can’t quite decide how it feels about Eva Perón, or how deeply it wants to interrogate the machinery around her. The result is a portrait that feels both grand and oddly evasive. Madonna’s performance is a major point of contention, but the movie’s larger issue is tonal: it wants tragedy, satire, and hagiography at once, and those impulses don’t always mesh.
Bottom line
Still, there’s enough craft here to make it memorable. The editing is sharp, the musical staging is often inventive, and Antonio Banderas gives the film a charismatic, watchable counterpoint. If you’re in the mood for a flamboyant historical musical that values spectacle over restraint, Evita has enough force to justify the ride.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Arantza (2★) · 1218 likes
Madonna and Antonio Banderas, two well known Argentinians,
skimblebanks (2★) · 738 likes
madonna can't really act but at least her singing is also bad
Cameron Bertram (3★) · 455 likes
I wonder if Alan Parker was listening to the radio and "La Isla Bonita" came on and he was like "Yea, she'll do."
emmy klein (2★) · 406 likes
yes we CAN sing everything…. but MUST we?
Anna🍓 (5★) · 323 likes
Evita starring the wonderfully talented Rachel Zegler closed tonight at the London Palladium and instead of seeing that we had to sit in my living room and watch Madonna massacre the role