What have critics said about F1: The Movie?

19 June 2025, 15:50 | Updated: 19 June 2025, 16:35

One week before F1’s box office race begins, critics have given the $250m film a middling qualifying position with some mixed reviews.

Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski is behind the Apple / Warner Bros. production which sees Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes return to the pinnacle of motorsport 30 years after a near fatal crash.

The 61-year-old actor has been praised by real life drivers for his performance, which saw him drive a modified Formula Two for the film.

Kosinski made full use of the FIA’s backing for the film by featuring all 24 grand prixs on the 2024 calendar, shooting at Britain’s Silverstone and giving cameos to drivers such as Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton - who also serves as a producer.

Javier Bardem also stars as Ruben Cervantes, an F1 tycoon who lures his old friend Sonny back to race alongside rookie Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) for the struggling APXGP team.

Sonny uses his charm to strike a relationship with Kate McKenna (a team director played by Kerry Codon) but Apple / Warner Bros. are hoping the film can similarly entice audiences if they are to make the $500m or so needed to bring a profit.

What critics have said about F1: The Movie

The film carries a huge budget, with $30m reportedly being spent on Pitt’s salary alone, and needs good reviews to ensure cinephiles will turn up alongside F1 anoraks.

The good news is that, while the reviews have not matched Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick, they are strong enough to guarantee wide appeal, with an 87 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 70 reviewers.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it an “outrageously cheesy but fiercely and extravagantly shot Formula One melodrama,” and gave it four stars. “[Kerry] Condon is a vital fuel ingredient and to a F1 non-believer like me, the result is surreal and spectacular,” he added.

“Sonny’s relentless wise-cracking occasionally wears a little thin, but there are enough moments of vulnerability to balance them out,” commented Sophie Butcher in Empire’s four star review, which also praised Condon. “F1 combines unparalleled access, pioneering filmmaking and moving redemption arcs to deliver an exhilarating cinematic experience.”

The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin called it “Barbie for Dads” and made a joke about “F being for Formula” - praising the chemistry between characters in his four star review.

The Barbie comment reflects the film making no attempt to hide its credentials as being made to promote the sport as much as entertain fans, and this aspect rested less well with The Times’s Kevin Maher. He said Pitt feels transplanted into the “corniest, dumbest, sports movie ever made,” and added that it plays out like a two-and-a-half hour advert. “F1 fans will lap it up. The rest of us? Not so much,” he concluded.

Nicholas Barber, for the BBC, wrote: “While Top Gun: Maverick was a masterpiece that pulled viewers into events in and out of the cockpit, F1 is simply a competently assembled collection of underdog sports-drama clichés. It never convinces you that its protagonists are human beings.”

Will the public agree? F1 will open in British cinemas next Friday, June 27, the same weekend as the real life Austrian grand prix.