Metacritic reviews

By common consensus, Stop Making Sense is the best concert film ever made.

Has there ever been a live concert film as vibrant or as brilliantly realized? I don't think so. [Review of re-release]

Part aerobics workout, part self-styled dreamscape, Sense is a hyperactive piece of performance art that begins as the stripped-down dress rehearsal of a garage band and builds into a mighty, exhausting spectacle that shakes as much ass as it kicks. [Review of re-release]

Stop Making Sense is pure fun and sheer exuberance transferred onto celluloid and perfectly re-created at the other end. Experiencing what Demme and the Talking Heads have crafted with this motion picture makes perfect sense. [Review of re-release]

Mr. Demme has captured both the look and the spirit of this live performance with a daring and precision that match the group's own.

It could as well be called Best Thing of Undetermined Species.

Stop Making Sense is so beautifully choreographed that in some ways it's more like theater than a rock show. [Review of re-release]

Starting with Mick Jagger, rock concerts have become, for the performers, as much sporting events as musical and theatrical performances. Stop Making Sense understands that with great exuberance.

It's 88 minutes of solid, inventive music, filmed in a straightforward manner that neither deifies the performers nor encourages an illusory intimacy, but presents the musicians simply as people doing their job and enjoying it.

But as good as it is, the film falls short of translating the exaltation and near-gospel music feel of the band in full flight. [2 Nov 1984]