Metacritic reviews

You don't have to believe all of it - or even any of it - to enjoy the rascally charms of Mr. Nice.

You don't have to be stoned to watch Mr. Nice, but it might help to be in the same state of mind as its real-life anti-hero, drug kingpin Howard Marks.

Though told here with appealing drollness, Marks's story makes an odd vessel for the filmmakers' casually advanced legalization arguments, what with its mischief making on the grandest scale possible.

The result is a film that's long and choppy, with little narrative momentum. And yet at times, Mr. Nice is frustratingly close to brilliant.

A solid, often entertaining life-of-crimer which benefits from some stylistic touches and a faithful, convincing central performance.

An affable throwback to those guilt-free days when hippie drug dealers radiated the glamorous aura of avant-garde heroes risking prison to spread the doctrine of liberation through cannabis.

So what we're left with is a sort of contact high, drifting gently over to our seats in the back row.

Writer-director Bernard Rose effectively conjoures an atompshere of poetic stoned-1960s British rebellion, a feeling of woozy, intoxicating possibility that will not-so-eventually be squashed.

Mildly amusing but overly discursive.

This boppy biopic pushes a wealth of outrageous incidents while never making anything resembling a point.