Old Joy
Metascore
84 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 24 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 24
  3. Negative: 1 out of 24
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  1. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    100
    It's in all the moments where little happens that Reichardt is most amazing, investing even a gas-station pit stop with perfect emotional pitch.
  2. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    100
    For all the ephemeral pleasure of the company of old friends, there is a chasm between them and the dynamics shift from moment to moment. The beauty of the film is how director Kelly Reichardt brilliantly captures those moments with lucid simplicity.
  3. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    100
    Old Joy is only 76 minutes long, but it has the contemplative power of Buddhist meditation. Reichardt gives us long, stoned takes of rural roads; shots of birds, insects and slugs in the spectacular Oregon rain forest; interludes with Mark's dog, Lucy. Some viewers may well be bored, or monumentally irritated, by this. I found it masterly, riveting.
  4. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    100
    The movie's scale is minuscule, but the physical and emotional landscapes it travels are as broad, deep and mysterious as the human psyche itself.
  5. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    100
    A triumph of modesty and of seriousness that also happens to be one of the finest American films of the year.
  6. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    91
    A spare, trembling lyric poem of a movie that uses stillness and facial blips the way melodramas use showdowns and action films big bangs.
  7. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    91
    Old Joy doesn't try for too much, but its subtle victories leave plenty to savor.
  8. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Carina Chocano
    90
    Miniaturist in its level of detail and evocatively abstract, Old Joy captures the weary mood of a generation that's crested its peak along with an era, quietly making a case for how well suited film can be to capturing the finer points of human interaction while preserving their mystery.
  9. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    90
    It feels so real it hurts, and it's the perfect antidote to all those movies where all sorts of stuff blows up.
  10. The New Republic
    Reviewed by: Stanley Kauffmann
    90
    A good Listless Film carries a double melancholy for all: it makes us sad for its characters and sad for the world that has thus affected them. Old Joy is such a film.
  11. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    90
    This quiet, elegiac road movie hinges on a few beautifully underplayed scenes between Daniel London and Will Oldham.
  12. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    88
    Without relying on dialogue, and once again making good but sparing use of Yo La Tengo's toasty guitar soundtrack, Reichardt proves herself a filmmaker with a masterful sense of the expressive purity of the passing moment.
  13. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    88
    Kurt and Mark's trip to those hot springs is a figurative return to Eden. Anyone who's had a disillusioning reunion with a moony old friend knows what Mark discovers: They're too old to stay that innocent. None of this hit me until after the movie ended. But it hit me hard: You can't go home again.
  14. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Jason Anderson
    88
    A precise, subtle and emotionally affecting portrait of the fraying friendship between two men, director Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy is an increasingly rare sort of American independent film: It aspires to be something other than a Hollywood movie with less money.
  15. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Don R. Lewis
    80
    A superb exercise in economical filmmaking. Not only from a financial standpoint, as the film was shot in HD and on-location in gorgeous Portland, Oregon…but the story here is so subtle and well drawn, if you blink you might miss it.
  16. Empire
    Reviewed by: David Parkinson
    80
    Making exceptional use of stillness and silence, this is a rather sad study of the passing of traditional concepts of American masculinity along with the landscape that forged them.
  17. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    80
    Against a radiant backdrop of decay and rebirth, nothing needs to be said; everything in this lovely film is crystalline.
  18. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    80
    If Old Joy is more laid-back and contemplative than "Mutual Appreciation," it's because the characters are more weathered. Open-ended as it may appear, it has a crushing finality. For all the wool-gathering and guitar-noodling, this road movie is at least as tender as it is ironic.
  19. Variety
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    80
    A beautifully nuanced study in friendship and the irretrievability of the past.
  20. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marrit Ingman
    78
    Old Joy is an accurately observed slice of that moment between postadolescence and parenthood, when friends cling or scatter, and circumstances force buried feelings to the fore.
  21. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    75
    The movie has a large theme, even if it's unspoken. Old Joy is about a particular friendship, but it's also about how American society changed in the '90s and the new century.
  22. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Ruthe Stein
    75
    The result is a film that fails to completely involve you, even as you admire its artistry.
  23. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    50
    Features some of the year's most beautiful scenery and two of its most wooden characters.
  24. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    25
    You must lead a dull life if it would be enlivened by 76 minutes' worth of Old Joy.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
5.8 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 49 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 26
  3. Negative: 15 out of 26
  1. WillN.
    3
    Pace is so slow that I could have been real time.
  2. MichaelG.
    8
    This film moves slowly, but it stayed with me. I woke up wondering how the characters were doing.
  3. ChadS.
    8
    What happens at the hot springs, stays at the hot springs. Even we don't know. "Old Joy", a film that could be described as "Chuck & Buck Go Camping", wisely goes for the shot of omission after Kurt(Will Oldham) goes for Mark's shoulders. Lucy knows. As Kurt and Mark head towards their car, Mark's clingy dog walks well ahead of the two men. Hmmm. In the opening scene, we see Mark(Daniel London), a Buddhist, meditating on his lawn. About what? Hmmm. All those tracking shots of rural Oregon as seen through their moving vehicle isn't there for just scenery's sake. It's what both men are looking at as they're thinking. There's sexual tension in all the objects that appear through the car window, and later, in the woods. I don't know what Terrence Malick has in mind when he shoots nature in close-up, but this filmmaker is telling a narrative about latent homosexuality through the use of sublimated objects. That slug, that bird, not to mention, the trees(read: phallic symbol), are all used as foreshadowing to the moment when Kurt gives Mark a massage. "Old Joy" is not a peaceful journey into the country. It just might be about the sham of marriage. This is scary stuff.… Full Review »
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