Seven Pounds

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A movie that plays better if you know nothing about it going in.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

Now, with Seven Pounds, the transformation of Will Smith is complete: Gone is any trace of love-me impishness, replaced by one of the sourest pusses Hollywood has seen since Joaquin Phoenix got his Screen Actors Guild card.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Gripping but gap-filled Seven Pounds will have half your brain asking "How could this be?" and the other half saying, "Shut up and go along for the ride!" Listen to the latter voice.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Some people will find it emotionally manipulative. Some people like to be emotionally manipulated. I do, when it's done well.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A spiritual successor to "The Pursuit of Happyness," but darker and more oblique.

USA Today Claudia Puig

While it doesn't break any new ground or provide any revelations, Seven Pounds is unabashedly emotional and cautiously hopeful. It's the feel-good movie for these feel-bad times.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Seven Pounds works better the more the viewer feels and the less he/she thinks. On an emotional level, one could decree that the movie is satisfying. On an intellectual level, it's disappointingly shallow.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

The movie is pretty unabashed about the all-but-corny sentiment: Each of us has something to give.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The film's Italian director does achieve in his second American outing a pleasing blend of Hollywood professional sheen and European sensitivity to character details and nuances.

Time Richard Corliss

This is what lifts Seven Pounds above other Smith dramas -- he does tentatively allow another adult onto his solitary planet.

Film Threat Scott Mendelson

Seven Pounds is the very definition of a 'noble failure.'

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It's a con job that feels like a precisely attenuated work of art, elegantly weaving flashbacks and ellipses into the story in an effort to conceal how shamelessly manipulative it is in the end. And as always, Smith comes out a winner.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

As written, Seven Pounds would have always been a melancholy experience, but a lighter touch would have helped to keep you from noticing the implausibility of its plot.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

I'd like to make a 911 call myself: Lord, please stop this increasingly fine actor (Smith) from climbing onto another cross.

Premiere Jenni Miller

Dawson is lovely to watch, and when Smith isn't furrowing his brow and looking concerned, he's not so bad himself.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

There's a head-pounding, gob-smacking literalness to this flick, extending from the title right through to the recurring imagery.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

The movie gets just enough right that the things it doesn't get right (beyond its overdependence on a not-so-surprising story puzzle) smack you cold in the face.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Seven Pounds is one part jigsaw puzzle, one part "The Giving Tree" and both parts marinated in melancholy.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Seven Pounds, coming after "The Pursuit of Happyness" and "I Am Legend," seems like the third in a trilogy of inspirational bummers.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Saintliness is a heavy burden to carry, and Smith can't help but buckle a bit. He's always interesting to watch, but crafting a real person out of his cardboard character proves an impossible task.

Empire Ian Freer

A collage of strong scenes, dull bits, good filmmaking and a dissatisfying emotional payoff. A laudable attempt to tackle heavyweight subject-matter that ends up just being heavy weather.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Preposterous romantic melodrama, which uses a fractured narrative to cloud an absurd plot that would probably be laughed off the screen if it were presented in a straightforward manner.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Seven Pounds has a heart as big as all outdoors. Unfortunately it's made out of high-fructose bull.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Contrived hunk of feel-good.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The whole narrative is too hollow and rickety as well as gimmicky for Muccino to breathe much life into it.

TV Guide Perry Seibert

An insult to the intelligence of most moviegoers.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

An unintentionally ludicrous drama of repentance.

Variety Todd McCarthy

An endlessly sentimental fable about sacrifice and redemption that aims only at the heart at the expense of the head. Intricately constructed so as to infuriate anyone predominantly guided by rationality and intellect.

Los Angeles Times Jan Stuart

The rest of Seven Pounds feels like a half-hour "Twilight Zone" script that has been pressed onto a gob of Silly Putty and stretched to the sinking point.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Mr. Smith's latest film is about nothing less than life and death, sin and atonement, and it takes the soggy cake for multiple layers of sentimentality topped by indigestible grandiosity.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Overall Seven Pounds is too heavy-handed and maudlin to be comprehensible, let alone moving. The real shocker is that not even Smith can rescue it.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

Dispiritingly obvious and phony from top to bottom.