Good, not great. A bit disappointing.

I thought it was dreadful. It wasn't just 'a bit' up it's own ass, it was entirely up there. As for funny, I think I mildly chuckled exactly once in the 2 hour running time. It's not a comedy. It's also not a mystery, nor really a drama. It talks endlessly about people I've never heard of and don't give a shit about. The single interesting character, Orson Welles, has about 5 minutes of screen time. The re-creation of 1930s hollywood was interesting and well done, that's about it.

This is: "David Fincher makes a movie from his dad's terrible script because he can, and f-you if you don't like it."

Once this thing hits netflix, expect the 'shit to hit the fan' from people expecting something even remotely resembling Fincher's popular work (Social Network, etc). Can't wait for the statistics (if they ever release them) of how many people start this on netflix but never finish. I'm betting 60%.

Well the first two posts aren't encouraging. I read somewhere else the the film is boring.

The RT score is way up there, but it sounds like this is a misfire for Fincher. That's quite unfortunate since it's his first movie in six years.

Too many people will be fooled by the metascore of 80. Did you watch Citizen Kane or read up on Orson Welles first?
Here's a 3/10* review on Imdb from someone who did: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6297781/

The Imdb rating is inflated by US 9.0 rating. Mostly fake because it only played a few theaters. Rest of world is 7.8.

I'm a fan of Fincher.
I enjoyed Citizen Kane and knew the basic of how it was made.

Still, I was lost during a big part of the movie, not really understanding who they were talking about.
By the end, things made sense and I was still able to enjoy the movie. I'd say it's a 7~8 out of 10 for me; me, a fan of Fincher and of cinema in general, that knows a bit about Citizen Kane.

The person that saw it with me really didn't like the movie. Didn't actually understand the point or what was happening.
And I understand that point of view.

It's not an easy film for the casual moviegoer.
Also, the main character is not very likeable. The guy is always trying to be the smart guy, always being arrogant, but ends up just being annoying.

It's similar to The Social Network in theme and style, but an inferior effort. Much inferior.

I agree. I had been excited for a new movie from Fincher since his last was Gone Girl in 2014. Mank is a decent movie but a step down from Fincher's previous work. I figure this will be one of those movies people will defend just because Fincher is the director. I love all of Fincher's past work and really like most of Orson Welles' films, but this movie really was disappointing. The "old-time Hollywood" aspect has been done just as good or even better in other movies (i.e. Ed Wood, Hail Caesar), so this film doesn't seem to be breaking any new grounds in that regard or really bring to life anything we haven't already seen before. It doesn't seem like there is much to Oldman's character to make it stand out above other great performances I have seen in similar films. The way I would describe this movie to friends is that it's "David Fincher making an Oscar-bait movie."

Lucky you. I wish I could have seen this on the big screen. The Black and White on an 4K TV doesn't quite capture the lighting contrast while viewing it in a living room, nor the sound engineering (unless you have a kick ass home theater room and system).

I also felt that the film had an air of self-awareness like the characters knew that they were telling "us" a story. I didn't quite feel like I was transported to another era but they did a great job with the set design and framing.

I long to see an Orson Welles biopic series covering the period he struggled and was living in Europe as Hollywood had moved on from him and his style of movie making. There's a documentary on Netflix that does this but it's a bit too MTVish