• Release Date: Oct 29, 2003
Girlhood Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 16 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 9 Ratings

  • Summary: A story of mothers and daughters, crime and its consequences, and ceaseless striving in the face of inconceivable adversity, girlhood is a testament to the faith and struggles of two young girls just trying to grow up. (Moxie Firecracker Films)
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 16
  2. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. Garbus spent three years patiently mining for beauty in the ugliest of environments. The remarkable result stands as a challenge to anyone who would have seen only the worst and walked right by.
  2. 80
    Despite similar excess, Garbus's follow-up to 2002's "The Execution of Wanda Jean" provides another powerful glimpse inside the American justice system.
  3. Detailed, compassionate, humane.
  4. Reviewed by: Frank Scheck
    60
    An eye-opening sociological examination that is alternately moving and tedious.

See all 16 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 7
  3. Negative: 1 out of 7
  1. CrystalY.
    10
    This movie was so touching and made you appreciate your mother and your own life.
  2. Ericka
    9
    Excellent visioning of the life of girls in the prison system. Honest look into the roadblocks that they face while in lock up and after being released. A truly touching and inviting story. Expand
  3. KS
    9
    Perhaps if the girls were caucasian, this documentary would have gotten better reviews. I like how straightforward it is. It just tells the girls' story. There is no upside to the endings. One girl's mom died and the other's walked away to get another fix. The girl who murdered someone was gang raped at 11 and is cut off emotionally from her pain. The other girl feels her pain from neglect and acts it out. Foster care and 8 homes in 8 months isn't necessarily an "up" ending. Their futur's are as much a mystery to us as it is to them. The LA Times review is wacked. Expand

See all 7 User Reviews