ADMIRABLY BOLD. There's something grand about the film's sincerity and the intensity of its emotions and something fresh and bold about the way director Gray uses the conventions of romantic melodrama.
A. O. ScottSubtle, funny and touching, with a striking downbeat authenticity. Director Craig Zobel is the real thing.
A. O. ScottThe silliness-much of which is clearly intentional-is blended with some genuine grandeur. The Pixar touch is evident in the precision of the visual detail and in the wit and energy of Michael Giacchino's score, but the quality control that has been exercised over this project also has a curiously undermining effect. The movie eagerly sells itself as semitrashy, almost-campy fun, but it is so lavish and fussy that you can't help thinking that it wants to be taken seriously, and therefore you laugh at, rather than with, its mock sublimity.
A. O. ScottA piercing satire, a poignant family drama and an investigation of the competing claims of honesty, loyalty, ambition and love.
A. O. Scott