Filth and Wisdom debuted in
Berlin International Film Festival with mixed reviews. On the
review aggregate website
Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 24% approval rating, based on 62 reviews with an average rating of 3.94/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "
Filth and Wisdom, while certainly ambitious, is mostly unconvincing and incoherent."
The Times Online claimed, "Madonna has done herself proud" and
The Telegraph described the film as "not an entirely unpromising first effort" but went on to say "Madonna would do well to hang on to her day job."
Peter Bradshaw of
The Guardian wrote, "Well, it had to happen. Madonna has been a terrible actor in many, many films and now – fiercely aspirational as ever – she has graduated to being a terrible director." Jonathan Romney of
Screen International called the film "a good-humoured, averagely average vanity project" and "a cheap and cheerful comedy," adding that "Madonna simply cannot direct actors."
The New Yorkers
Anthony Lane panned the film, saying that "in technical terms, more professional productions than this are filmed and cut on
iMovie, by ten-year-olds, a thousand times a day" and that "if the actors were paid according to their talents, they cannot have cost more than forty bucks." ==Cast==