‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’: Here’s What Critics Are Saying

James Hibberd
·4 min read
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Taylor Swift’s sure-to-be-blockbuster The Eras Tour concert film is getting some early raves.

With the film opening Friday, with early screenings Thursday night, the first batch of reviews for Swift’s three-hour movie are rolling in from its Los Angeles premiere that was held Wednesday night. While there’s only seven reviews so far, the film has an early 100 percent “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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“Audience members sang along and danced in the aisle and cheered so loudly I often couldn’t tell where the roar of the crowd onscreen ended and the roar of the crowd in the theater began,” writes The Hollywood Reporter. I ended the movie exhausted from all the sensory overload.”

“Though it isn’t possible for a movie to take the place of a live concert, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour comes as close as possible, less because of how the movie is captured and more in how fans are going to interact with it,” writes Uproxx. “It also manages to pepper in breathtaking moments of Swift connecting with the camera and the audience getting lost in her songs, emoting them right back to her … Even in this first screening, it all already feels bigger than Taylor Swift, if anything can be bigger than Taylor.”

“It’s a staggering feat,” writes NME. “In the space of one seamless performance, Swift is at turns a playfully eccentric artist, a country star and a genuine pop icon … as The Eras Tour proves time and again, Taylor Swift can do pretty much whatever she wants.”

“A dazzling flex of musical muscle,” raved Screendaily.

“The entire film offers a front row seat to the grandeur,” writes USA Today. “The staging is so massive that even the best seats in a stadium — and the King Kong-sized video screens — could provide only so much detail. But on the big screen, the close-ups are glorious, whether zooming in on Swift’s cat-eye makeup outlining her crystal blue eyes, the moss covering her piano and the sweat sticking to her bangs…”

“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour radiates the same energy that reverberated through the stands each night, complete with the deafening sound of the crowd,” writes Deadline. “Expect to leave the theater with your ears ringing…The only other thing the film might have benefitted from was some behind-the-scenes footage.”

Even though the film cuts down her three-and-a-half hour live show, it still manages to include roughly 40 songs in its 169 minutes. The songs that didn’t make the cut, according to USA Today: “The Archer,” “No Body, No Crime,” “Long Live,” “Illicit Affairs,” “Cardigan” and “Wildest Dreams.”

At the premiere, Swift herself danced in the aisle for the film’s final song, “Karma.”

The Eras Tour builds off Swift’s incredibly successful world tour and it will open in more than 100 countries overseas. The film is expected to open this weekend to a massive $100-to-$125 million in North America, aided by premium large-screen formats like Imax showcasing the film. The film is very likely to top all box office records for concert movies.

The concert was shot across three shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Swift made industry waves by bypassing the traditional studios, cutting out the middle man, and partnering directly with theaters.

The current concert movie record holder is Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (2011), which grossed $73 million (not adjusted for inflation) at the domestic box office. While Michael Jackson’s 2001 posthumous concert movie This Is It earned $72.1 million domestically.

Likewise, Swift’s ongoing concert tour could become the highest-grossing tour of all time, and might gross $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone, according to CNN.

AMC Theatres is releasing Eras Tour in the U.S. via Variance Releasing. AMC had a world-premiere screening in Los Angeles for the concert film on Wednesday.

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