Metacritic reviews

A gorgeous, fluid, wonderfully exhilarating movie.

This happy daydream contains Coppola's most assured work since "Apocalypse Now;" save for its modesty, it is in no way inferior to his masterpiece, "The Godfather" Saga. [12 Aug 1988]

It's also [Coppola's] most gloriously extravagant film since "One from the Heart." [12 Aug 1988]

Francis Coppola's stylish and heartfelt tribute to the innovative automobile designer Preston Thomas Tucker turns out to be one of his most personal and successful movies.

The result is a film consistent narratively, confident stylistically and abounce with the quaint quality that animated both the hero and his times, something we used to call pep.

Stylistically, the film is a dream. But in every case, the style has a reason. [12 Aug 1988]

The late '40s world Coppola has put together for Tucker is an extremely stylized one: Vittorio Storaro's cinematography has the bright, hard, almost lacquered look of old Technicolor; Dean Tavoularis' sets, built with slanting floors and surfaces, create an imaginary, compacted space in which actors and objects seem to be thrusting out toward the camera; and the transitions between scenes, based on visual rhymes and elaborate wipes, effectively remove the movie from the orderly flow of normal film time. [12 Aug 1988]

Tucker represents the sunniest imaginable telling of an at least partly tragic episode in recent history.

What could be a needed and satisfying commercial breakthrough for Coppola.

Coppola's new film is not so much about the car as about the man, and it is with the man that he fails to deliver.