Low Down was met with mixed reviews.
Review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes sampled 50 critics' reviews, 25 positive and 25 negative, bringing the score to 50%,
averaging 5.7/10. The film's consensus reads: "Rich in mood and on-screen talent but lacking in narrative depth,
Low Down tells an oft-told tale with a troubling dearth of imagination."
Metacritic, another review aggregator, gives the film 58 out of 100 based on reviews from 21 critics (six of them positive, thirteen mixed, and two negative), with its general agreement being "mixed or average" reviews.
Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for
RogerEbert.com, gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "a very good jazz movie and a very good heroin movie," while
Rex Reed described Elle Fanning's performance as "heartbreaking". George Varga of the
San Diego Union-Tribune deemed
Low Down "a grimly gripping movie" but was less effusive than Seitz, giving it two-and-a-half stars.
David Edelstein, in
Vulture, praised the performances by Hawkes, Fanning, and much of the supporting cast, but felt that the film was "not as entertaining as" the book on which it was based: "The weakness of
Low Down is that it misses the wry tone and scruffy, eccentrically funny parts of [Amy-Jo] Albany’s memoir." ==References==