
In early adolescence, Humbert fell hopelessly and tragically in love with a girl his own age, and, as he grew into adulthood, he never lost his obsession with "nymphets," teenagers who walk a fine line between being a girl and a woman. While looking for a place to live after securing a new teaching position, he meets Charlotte Haze (Melanie Griffith), a pretentious and annoying woman who seems desperately lonely and is obviously attracted to Humbert. Humbert pays her little m... (Full plot summary below)
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In early adolescence, Humbert fell hopelessly and tragically in love with a girl his own age, and, as he grew into adulthood, he never lost his obsession with "nymphets," teenagers who walk a fine line between being a girl and a woman. While looking for a place to live after securing a new teaching position, he meets Charlotte Haze (Melanie Griffith), a pretentious and annoying woman who seems desperately lonely and is obviously attracted to Humbert. Humbert pays her little mind until he meets her 13-year-old daughter Lolita (Dominique Swain), the image of the girl that Humbert once loved. Humbert moves into the Haze home as a boarder and eventually marries Charlotte in order to be closer to Lolita. When Charlotte finds out about Humbert's attraction to her daughter, she flees the house in a rage, only to be killed in an auto accident. Without telling Lolita of her mother's fate, Humbert takes her on a cross-country auto trip, where their relationship begins to move beyond the traditional boundaries of stepfather and step-daughter..
Leave your thoughts about Lolita.
| EmpireAngie ErrigoLyne's efforts to be both passionate and artistic are generally successful, although a few sex scenes are disturbing and arguably close to salacious. |
| The New York TimesCaryn JamesThe film's master stroke is its understanding that this is Humbert's story, told in his own lyrical voice, from his own passionate, sad, tortured perspective. |
| SalonCharles TaylorFor all of their vaunted (and, it turns out, false) fidelity to Nabokov, Lyne and Schiff have made a pretty, gauzy Lolita that replaces the book's cruelty and comedy with manufactured lyricism and mopey romanticism. |
| Christian Science MonitorDavid SterrittVladimir Nabokov's novel helped open society's eyes to the evils of pedophilia in the 1950s, and this pensive adaptation renews the warning for a later generation. |
| ReelViewsJames BerardinelliIn many ways, the concept underlying Lolita is more provocative than the actual material, which tends to be a bit long-winded. This is more the fault of the book than of Lyne's approach. |
| New York Magazine (Vulture)David DenbyThe new version of Lolita, released at last, turns out to be a beautifully made, melancholy, and rather touching account of a doomed love affair between a full-grown man and a very young woman. |
| TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghLyne's direction is sometimes overblown -- debauched playwright Clare Quilty's (Frank Langella) appearance amid the pale fire of exploding bug-zappers really is a bit much -- and the unfortunate fact is that the novel is one long tease, an intricate, seductive game in which words are as important as deeds. |
| SlateLouis MenandLyne has created, from a screenplay by Stephen Schiff, an earnest movie about a man who, by falling in love with his emotionally immature stepdaughter, ends up destroying himself. |
| Chicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumThough Adrian Lyne's clodhopper direction, underlined by a mushy Ennio Morricone score, predictably runs the gamut from soft-core porn in the manner of David Hamilton to hectoring close-ups, this is perhaps Lyne's best movie after Jacob's Ladder--a genuinely disturbing (if far from literary) adaptation of Nabokov's extraordinary novel, written by former journalist Stephen Schiff and starring, predictably, Jeremy Irons. |
| The New YorkerAnthony LaneAll movie adaptations of Nabokov fall short, by definition, but this one is the most graceful failure so far. |