Metacritic reviews

Full of brilliantly executed coups de théâtre, showing the director's natural flair for spectacle.

One of the screen's great portrayals of the hell-raising and malaise of young men in their 20s, hit Italy like a comic thunderbolt when it was released there in 1953 -- and it struck the American art-house audience in much the same way when it premiered here in 1956. Now it returns, and unlike its five aging-boy protagonists, this movie hasn't lost its first youth.

It was this ineffably poignant semiautobiographical reverie that unleashed fully Fellini's shimmering, flowing poetic style, echoed perfectly in a plaintive score by Fellini's potently evocative collaborator, Nino Rota.

Its elements all come together with an unforced perfection, every scene feels real and alive in a way that many of his more surrealistic later films do not, and Leonard Maltin, for one, has argued that I Vitelloni is no less than Fellini's masterpiece.

Though still realist in approach, its aura of bitter nostalgia places it squarely among Fellini's most personal and atmospheric works.

This semiautobiographical work by Federico Fellini was the first film to bring him a measure of world attention.

It’s as wistful and sad as it is funny and charming, with the first of Nino Rota’s great scores to keep it burbling along.

It's a film of sensitivity, observation and humor - a must-see for Fellini enthusiasts and a worthwhile investment for everyone else.

Federico Fellini, long a scripter, in his second feature film satirizes the 'wastrels', the do-nothing sons of middle-class Italian provincials whose life ranges from schoolroom to poolroom.

Moving from cafés to poolrooms to movie theaters, it's the prototypical male ensemble film.