Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel 2009

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Hefner's Playboy Foundation fought for civil liberties in general. The cost for these activities came out of his profits, and that didn't give him a moment's pause. Read more

CNN.com: The film humanizes Hefner in a way no one has attempted to do before on the big screen. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: The film is too busy promoting St. Hugh to offer serious discussion of his life. Read more

New York Magazine/Vulture: He may be something of a punch line nowadays, but Hugh Hefner was once a genuine force for social change, and this lively, candid doc reclaims the controversial and charming magazine and lifestyle mogul as a piece of living history. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Does Hugh Hefner own a pair of jeans? It's a question that misses the point of the Hefner experience. But it's the sort of thing you leave Brigitte Berman's fawning new Hefner documentary wondering. Read more

Cliff Doerksen, Chicago Reader: Even after 124 minutes of praise he still seems like a sad bastard. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: A pop history lesson that holds you, but it's no deeper than an E! True Hollywood Story. Read more

Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times: An involving look at an American icon as well as an adept snapshot of our national zeitgeist from the McCarthy era through the Reagan years. Read more

Jeannette Catsoulis, NPR: This eye-opening documentary reveals the mensch beneath the moolah, the ardent social reformer beneath the paisley-patterned shirts. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: As silly and gendered as his boy-fantasy sexual revolution looks in the rear-view mirror, it both sparked and signaled a prodigious sea change in American mores. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: As ridiculous as Hefner's life sometimes seems, he has been an exemplary citizen, as this documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman spells out. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: A studiously airbrushed portrait of its subject, this obsequious biography of Hugh Hefner highlights his undeniable and important good works, while skirting any serious effort at context or psychological insight. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A bountiful history lesson, but the portrait of the man behind the bunnies is unrevealing. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: Like a half-naked Playmate, there are a few tantalizing glimpses but no real reveal of Hefner. Read more

Andy Klein, Variety: Berman's goal was to reveal "the other side of Hugh Hefner that had not yet been portrayed in any of the prior documentaries about him." In that context, the film's balance is appropriate; considered in a vacuum, however, it is almost a canonization. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: A proper profile of Hefner would start and end with sex, and not merely glance on casualties like Dorothy Stratten (and even the loveless Hef himself). The movie can't seem to get it up. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: This is not a probing examination of Hef in all his complexity. Read more

Rob Nelson, Variety: This fawning docu goes to lengths to portray the octogenarian Playboy magazine founder as among the greatest figures of 20th-century American popular culture, while only cursorily acknowledging his status as a pioneering softcore pornographer. Read more

Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: A worthy topic, but it's bypassed for a familiar culture-wars narrative. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: Te Hugh Hefner in this movie is Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi and William Kunstler all rolled into one. Read more