Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Although it's in the same genre as "The English Patient," it's a vastly better movie --more surprising and original, more rigorous and sympathetic. This film is oddly shaped. It is also heartbreaking and exhilarating.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

The able cast brings these emotionally complex characters to life, while making Shawn Slovo's occasionally lyrical dialogue sound perfectly natural.

USA Today Mike Clark

The result is far from perfect, but to its many merits, add timing. You never get a movie with this kind of story in mid-August.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's beautifully shot on Cephallonian locations by superb landscape photographer John Toll.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A handsomely staged and craftily constructed tearjerker.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Ultimately, it's a surprisingly empty experience.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Never reaches this level of devastating loss despite its tragedies, but it's not the dismal bomb that much of the British press claims.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Grand passion, secrecy, world politics and mortal danger provide a heady mix for this spectacularly beautiful movie. If only the accents were as reliable as the azure of the sea.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Good old-fashioned romantic entertainment, just restrained enough to skirt schmaltz.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

In this film there is a scene where something is said in English pronounced with one accent, and a character asks, ''What did he say?'' and he is told -- in English pronounced with another accent.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

Handsomely weathered John Hurt, as Pelagia's father, gives a performance of such unhackneyed dignity that it provides a moral compass for the action and helps to keep the ricocheting emotional content of the film in balance.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Strives for comprehensive coverage of its theme of forbidden love.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Doesn't so much strike a lot of sour notes as fail to strike the right ones.

Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not credited)

A movie that reduces history, as well as eros, to a postcard.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The only aspect that emerges a winner is the gorgeous Mediterranean scenery.

Time Richard Corliss

Corelli is a coffee-table movie: one leafs through the gorgeous vistas and nods through the narrative.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Partly a travelogue for the Greek islands, partly a simplistic love story, and generally a rehash of the Oscar-winning "Mediterraneo," as if we needed even the first one.

Portland Oregonian Barry Johnson

No crime against the moviemaker's art, but it is flawed in a way we wouldn't expect from the director of "Shakespeare in Love."

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Ms. Cruz...once again proves her inability to give a bad performance even under the worst of circumstances.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

Neither a badly miscast Cage nor an oddly dispassionate Cruz remotely suggest the ardor of love's passion.

Variety Derek Elley

Strikes too many false notes on the dramatic side to add up to a satisfying emotional experience.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Based on an interminable 1994 international bestseller by Louis de Bernières that I found impossible to make my way through. The movie duplicates exactly my experience with the book, although I must say I was thankful to be spared serial outbreaks of hearty Greek dancing.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Given the polyglot nature of the cast, with actors from at least five countries taking their best shots at the English language, it's unclear why Cage felt he needed an accent or, stranger still, why it took him a reported seven months to come up with this one.

New Times (L.A.) Bill Gallo

The moviemakers have eliminated the finer points of the novel in favor of broad strokes. Very broad strokes.

Newsweek David Ansen

Every role is miscast. Whose idea was it to have the boyishly British Bale play an illiterate Greek peasant, or the elegant Hurt a gruff-voiced country doctor? Cruz’s run of bad luck in American movies continues.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

We began this dismal movie season with one lethally bad World War II romance -- "Pearl Harbor" -- and now we're wrapping up with another howling dog.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

As the movie methodically plods forward on a screenplay (by Shawn Slovo) consisting entirely of clichés and watered-down exposition, it becomes sadly apparent that its only reliable asset is the gorgeous view.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Sells ignorance as a refined evening's entertainment.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

A bungled screen version of Louis de Bernieres' cult novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin was doomed from the moment Nicolas Cage was cast as the "life-devouring," Puccini-loving hero.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

The real problem is not the maudlin script or Madden's travelogue touch. It's Cage as Corelli, a miscasting that turns the normally volatile, edgy performer into little more than a spokesman for the Olive Garden.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

I wish I'd brought a pair of peas to the screening. Then I could have taken in the glorious scenery without the dumb dialogue, which is delivered in a jangle of accents that makes a mockery of ethnicity.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

To be fair, it's not solely Cage's fault that his new film, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, is lousy -- director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) deserves most of the heat for this listless dud.

Slate David Edelstein

Probably the most horrifying stuff I've seen all week.