- 10
...succulent, fascinating, and bizarrely touching...
—Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly
- 9
...astonishing...
—A. O. Scott New York Times
- 9
McKinney may well be a madwoman, but Morris connects so deeply to her obsessions that the film's tone never seems exploitative or mocking. Mostly, it's just endlessly curious in the familiar Morris way: curious about another in his career-long gallery of eccentrics, curious about British tabloid culture, and curious about how radically stories are distorted, both by outlets looking for an angle and by individuals who reserve their greatest deceits for themselves.
—Scott Tobias Onion AV Club
- 9
...another of Morris' alternately hilarious and disturbing inquiries into the slippery nature of truth.
—Andrew O'Hehir Salon
- 9
I've seen Tabloid twice. It is a spellbinding enigma, and one of the damnedest films Morris has ever made.
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 8
... one of the director's most squirrely matchups of form and content.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 8
...wonderfully entertaining...
—Chris Cabin filmcritic.com
- 8
...bonkers in all the best possible ways -- a welcome return to perverse portraiture after a lengthy sojourn in the realm of more serious-minded subjects.
—Peter Debruge Variety
- 8
Absurd as it sounds, Joyce's conviction is not only convincing but contagious. So, too, is her elastic sense of reality -- a 90-minute immersion in her world is enough to make you question your own.
—J. Hoberman Village Voice
- 7
The film may not get us any closer to the true facts of McKinney's case than all the press materials it now joins in the archives, but like a breezy tabloid read, it makes for a diverting enough pastime.
—Andrew Schenker Slant Magazine
- 7
Morris clearly invested so much time and energy in McKinney's story because he saw her as emblematic of our crazed times. Others might wonder whether the sad saga deserves quite this much attention, but there's no denying the film's morbid fascination.
—Stephen Farber Hollywood Reporter
- 6
In the end, he [Morris] probably makes too much of it all, using McKinney's fantasias as a springboard for deep-dish philosophizing about the nature of truth and how we are shaped by the media. Sometimes a tabloid story is just a tabloid story.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 5
...an oddball lead character and a smirky style do not necessarily add up to a complete movie.
—Kyle Smith New York Post