Advanced Search Beta »
Basic Search Fields
Earth
Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 15 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 15
  3. Negative: 0 out of 15
view
per page
  1. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    91
    Even blood, spilled so freely, has a distinctive intensity of red in this beautiful and harrowing film.
  2. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
    90
    Both visually and emotionally, a panoramic picture; Mehta wields a master's hand as she weaves together vistas of urban and pastoral India with thoughts on the nature of man as it keeps cycling out in the specifics of history.
  3. Chicago Tribune
    88
    An extraordinary movie on many levels.
  4. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Foreman
    88
    A remarkable accomplishment. It takes one of the century's vast tragedies...and makes it heart-rendingly real and intimate.
    All this critic's reviews
  5. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Gemma Files
    80
    Mehta's latest release, combines a similarly intoxicating visual immediacy and delight with a sobering outsider's long view.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    80
    A powerful and disturbing reminder of how a civilization can suddenly crack under certain pressures.
  7. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    Told as a melodrama and romance, not docudrama, and that makes it all the more effective.
  8. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    75
    It's a passionate, beautifully mounted film -- but the agenda she sets for herself is too large and the conflicts she portrays too complicated to be illustrated in a single drama.
  9. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Jay Carr
    75
    Hurls its Holocaust at us in a series of justifiably horrific images.
  10. Film.com
    Reviewed by: John Hartl
    70
    Gorgeous and troubling.
  11. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    70
    Telling things through the eyes of a spoiled, precocious, troublemaking 8-year-old narrator is both an overdone device and not a particularly engaging one.
  12. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    60
    Sumptuous historical melodrama.
  13. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    58
    A draggy affair livened occasionally by bursts of color or raw emotion, but just as often convoluted and hackneyed. It's a case of a film taking on, admirably, more than it can chew.
    All this critic's reviews
  14. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Lisa Alspector
    50
    Unfortunately the allegory tends to overpower the characterizations even as it deepens them.
  15. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Jessica Winter
    40
    Mehta feels compelled to twist the screw, shamelessly plying her audience with mawkish tropes wearing the garb of "innocence."
prev next
Page:
  • 1