Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Road Home, The
Sony Pictures Classics


8.3

based on 25 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 18 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: G for General Audiences

Starring Ziyi Zhang, Honglei Sun, Hao Zheng, Yuelin Zhao, Bin Li, Guifa Chang, and Wencheng Sung

The story of a Chinese man who works in the city, far from the village where he was born. When his father dies he comes home for the funeral and spends three days with his mother, thinking back to the period in which his parents met and fell in love. (Sony Pictures Classics)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Shi Bao (also novel Remembrance)
DIRECTED BY:	Yimou Zhang
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: November 27, 2001 Video: November 27, 2001 Theatrical: May 25, 2001
RUNNING TIME:	89 minutes, Color / BW
ORIGIN:	China
LANGUAGE(S):	Mandarin with English subtitles

Original Chinese title "Wo De Fu Qin Mu Qin"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A great love story and a deeply moving celebration of simple lives.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Shines with the kind of honesty that's very scarce in today's ultra-manipulative cinema.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A gorgeous film with a vision strong enough to sustain heart-tugging, heightened by San Bao's romantic score, that verges on the sentimental.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The result is an enchanting story of love from an idealized past that endures in the mundane present.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A beautifully textured, disarmingly simple movie about romantic devotion.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It's the rare film that trusts both its audience's intelligence and its emotions.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

The Road Home takes a path few movies choose to travel these days, but it's a very affecting journey.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

This is a gentle, engaging narrative of constancy and devotion against all odds, both natural and bureaucratic, in which the past represents enduring family values and customs.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

A cinematic ballad of such seamless construction and exquisite tonal balance it transcends most of the pitfalls of movies that aspire to a classic, lyric simplicity.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The director finds poetry in the face of his lead actress, whose performance is as luminous and moving as the film itself.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

The flutes soar a little too often, but Yimou's film is genuinely moving.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Abundant arthouse crowd appeal.

USA Today Mike Clark

It's a sweet tale, but the movie's real subject is Zhang, the camera's muse that the lens adores.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

It's a simple story, reminiscent of the Iranian film "The Wind Will Carry Us."

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

With so many cynical Hollywood romances cluttering theaters, Zhang Yimou's unabashed simplicity is most welcome.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

As luminous as the star presence at its center. It's at once a touching teacher movie and an even more touching love story.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The lyrical The Road Home is less political and less flashy than some previous films by Zhang Yimou.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Has a graceful simplicity that many will find hard to resist.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The result is an interesting, if slightly unbalanced, hybrid: a social problem film with the warm heart of a deeply felt love story.

Variety Derek Elley

Takes the simplest of stories and weaves a seductive, extremely moving portrait of a young woman’s unshakable love.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

A nostalgic paean to China's fading pastoral ways, might easily be taken for an audition tape for Zhang Ziyi.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Predictable, not so much from his (Zhang Yimou) previous movies as from the work of the many sentimentalists who have already plowed this well-tilled turf.

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

Sad to say, the story is simply too slight to sustain the film.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

The Road Home is foremost enthralled, however, with its lead actress -- wide-eyed and pigtailed, revered in close-up after stunned close-up.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

By all current standards it's a startlingly ingenuous film.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dan B. gave it a 3:
I remember being excited to see the new Zhang Yimou movie back when it was released. And then I saw it. And ever since, I have not been so excited about his movies. Pity.

Chad S. gave it a 5:
"The Road Home" is a movie about how cute Zhang Ziyi looks when she's in love. It's clear to us that the other Zhang is in love with his subject, because he alone may find Di's (Ziyi) compendium of long distance ogling at her village's new schoolteacher, a sequence that's made for compelling viewing. Yes, we note how her pigtails slap against her cheeks when she's excited. Yes, Di is adorable...and illiterate. "The Road Home" seems nostalgic for a time when women weren't allowed to be educated. The narrator, the deceased man's son, tells us that his mother never grew tired of eavesdropping on her husband's schoolhouse sessions for the last forty years. This woman's life on the periphery is treated with fond nostalgia. It's the audience's job to supply the horror.

Yoon C. gave it a 5:
Zhang Ziyi as an infatuated doe-eyed girl is annoying to the max, what with Zhimou's inappropriate use of slow-motion and lyrical visual waxing over peasant girl antics. It's interesting, even potentially comedic, that in a remote village a schoolteacher from the city can seem like a rock star, but the movie is so earnest and well-meaning that the only words that came to mind was Mao's "To rebel is justified". I'd like to toss this movie out the window. Zhimou, sometimes a fine director, has no business giving us a lecture on virtue. Yech.

David B. gave it a 10:
This movie is too good to be true!

Edmond B. gave it a 10:
This movie is definetly the best asian movie i've seen.

Harvey C. gave it a 10:
Most touching movie I've seen in a long time.

David C. gave it a 10:
This movie exemplifies the true essence of love and embodies the real reason for making movies. Honor, integrity, courage, and Love.

Road Home, The Sony Pictures Classics

Road Home, The
Sony Pictures Classics