Metacritic reviews

Downey found a way to channel his working-class audience’s anger against liberal shibboleths and not incidentally take down both his dad and his surrogate dad — Teddy ­Kennedy. It’s a ­riveting Oedipal tragedy.

The film is like his life: scabrous, upsetting, kind of moving, funny as hell, alive with hints of how we've become what we are.

This fascinating show-business documentary brings its subject to life, warts and all, in a way that would no doubt have thoroughly pleased him.

Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie is as fair a portrayal the weak-chinned warrior will get — and fairer than he deserves.

Watching a movie about the late trash-TV pioneer turns out to be fascinating, even when his story is told as messily as it is here.

The Mouth’s dubious legacy and his many off-camera complications are examined with a coarse affection of which he himself would surely approve.

As a look at how we got from there to here, “Evocateur” is one for the time capsule.

Inflammatory talk-show host Morton Downey Jr. sparked, delighted, and quickly faded like a firecracker--not unlike the erratic, quick-fire presentation of his persona in this documentary.

Ironically for a movie about the ratings value of shock, Évocateur suffers from its own lack of red meat.

Directors Kramer, Miller and Newberger prefer embellishment, allowing personal stories about Downey to fuel animated re-enactments that trivialize rather than penetrate.