O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's a wild, whacked-out wonder. Coenheads rejoice.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A wildly original movie with astonishingly varied moods and influences.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's a new new thing, classic myth from both literature and the movies, commingled, set to great folk music, and untrammeled by any sense of predictability, urgency, realism or believability but hypnotic, graceful and seductive.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

It is, all in all, a rambunctious and inspired ride in which the Coen brothers' voracious fascination with the arcana of American popular culture and their whiz-kid inventiveness reach new heights of whimsy.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Clooney has become a movie star, and the Coens have given him his very own "It Happened One Night." The man, and the movie, are downright bona fide.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

From moment to moment, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a pleasure. But when the Coens are really cooking, when the acting and the conception and the music all come together, it's something more -- Dogpatch rapture.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Devilishly delightful.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

This time around, though, the Coens' usual arch deliberateness isn't quite as deliberate, and there's an appealing shagginess to some of the episodes and performances.... This is the Coen brothers' most emotionally felt movie, and that's not meant as faint praise.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A charming, if lightweight, Coen brothers escapade flecked by plenty of visual and performance grace notes.

Time Richard Corliss

Toss in enough gorgeous bluegrass music to make the movie's CD a must-have, and you have prime, picaresque entertainment.

Film.com Robert Horton

All I can say is this particular excursion into screwball madness is often heavenly, and frankly leaves critical explication somewhat unnecessary. Go see it and laugh.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

As a Coen brothers fan I hate to say this, but the movie's a collection of great bits and pieces rather than a complete work.

Film.com Sean Means

The risk pays off for Clooney and the Coens, as O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a nicely off-kilter exploration of American gumption.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Enlivening things to an unprecedented extent, the songs turn O Brother into perhaps the warmest production in the Coens' repertoire.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

A remarkable film. From its performances on down to director of photography Roger Deakins' sun-baked, dirty-ochre cinematography, the film is all of a piece.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Joyously unhinged and outrageously inventive.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

A clever and satisfyingly abundant entertainment.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

The film is worth seeing for George Clooney's performance. More than ever he seems like a Clark Gable for our time.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

For all its originality, O Brother doesn't seem to have a point, or enough spark to distract us from the lack thereof.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

O Brother contains sequences that are wonderful in themselves--lovely short films--but the movie never really shapes itself into a whole.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

While it displays its share of quirky charm, off-kilter characters and outlandish situations, this is really the first film where you can feel the Coens straining to keep up with themselves.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Not quite as funny as it wants to be. Mostly, it's just silly. But as always, the Coens are entertaining themselves first.and their quirky individuality has served them and their fans well so far.

USA Today Mike Clark

Of all unlikely possibilities, the team has finally made a movie that, for them, is on the tepid side.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

The art direction is impeccable, but this is a pop-up book that I was impatient to slam.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Often clever but fundamentally shallow, this shaggy-dog story is greatly enriched by its extraordinary bluegrass soundtrack, supervised by T Bone Burnett and performed by a phenomenal collection of artists.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

For all its ambitions, though, the Coens' odyssey is a scattershot affair with too many tricks and twists for its own good.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Remains naggingly hollow, a cerebral exercise in whimsy that isn't nearly clever or funny enough to seem like more than grand self-indulgence.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

After making their two best features to date, "Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski," the Coen brothers have surely come up with their worst.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Whenever the music subsides and the characters speak the Coens' lines, the film turns back into mush.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Why would filmmakers with this much talent work this hard to thumb their noses at everything they put on screen?