The first ‘Tenet’ reviews are mixed

The first reviews for Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s repeatedly delayed blockbuster, have finally emerged, and they are very much a mixed bag.

Let’s start off with the positive, which is that, at the moment, Tenet currently has 79% on Rotten Tomatoes after 42 reviews. That score isn’t too bad when you consider all of the hype and expectation that has surrounded Nolan’s latest time-traveling adventure, and it is above the scores for The Prestige (76%) and Interstellar (72%).

Both The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin and Kevin Maher of The Times gave Tenet 5/5 reviews, with the latter calling it “a delightfully convoluted masterpiece,” and Tom Beasley said it was a “pleasurable” headache in his 4/5 review for Flickering Myth.

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Den Of Geek’s Rosie Fletcher acknowledged that Tenet is far from “a perfect film, but teased that it might “just be perfect cinema,” something that the New York Times’ Jessica Klang also echoed in her review.

“Seek it out, if only to marvel at the entertainingly inane glory of what we once had and are in danger of never having again,” wrote Klang, alluding to the increasing risky future of the theatrical experience.

Most reviews heaped praise on the spectacle and visuals of Tenet, but admitted that the film’s complicated and dense plot would be a challenge for some viewers. So it makes sense then that a number of journalists were left unimpressed by it.

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Indiewire’s Mike McCahill called Tenet “a humourless disappointment,” BBC’s Nicholas Barber said that it “collapses under the weight of all the plot stands and concepts stuffed into it,” and in her 2/5 review for The Guardian Catherine Shoard described it as a palindromic dud.

Audiences will finally get to form their own opinions on Tenet when it is released into UK cinemas on 26 August.