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100Maggie Gyllenhaal is such a miracle of an actress that she makes you respond to the innocence of Sherry's desperate, selfish destruction.
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91In Gyllenhaal's all-out performance, it reminded me most of Judy Davis in "High Tide," another movie directed by a woman (Gillian Armstrong) about a misfit mother and her daughter. It has the same fierce honesty.
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88Maggie Gyllenhaal cements her reputation as a gifted, if somewhat aloof, actress in Laurie Collyer's sad character piece.
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Buoyed by Gyllenhaal's hauntingly complex portrait of the vivacious but addictive Sherry, the film is no mere by-the-numbers chronology of addiction. Gyllenhaal's sympathetic and charismatic performance binds us to the horror of Sherry's personal demons.
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80What distinguishes the film from its many peers is the quality of Ms. Collyer's writing -- which rarely reaches for obvious, melodramatic beats -- and the precision of Ms. Gyllenhaal's performance. She treats the character neither as a case study nor as an opportunity to show off her range, but rather as a completely ordinary and therefore arrestingly complicated person.
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75Danny Trejo plays Sherry's sometime lover and friend, and he's a big asset to a small, sharp film that won't be for everyone. That's a compliment.
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75Keeps you riveted through parts that might otherwise be difficult to watch.
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75There is nothing flashy about these performances, but Gyllenhaal, Dillon and Gosling fully inhabit their characters, giving haunting portrayals. Watch for these names to emerge on the short list for Academy Award consideration.
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75Theirs is a well-worn story that may not need to be told, but they do tell it well.
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70The wonder of Sherrybaby is that we can admire Sherry's exuberance and evident love of life -- and the extraordinary actress who portrays her -- without really being sure where she's going.
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70Gyllenhaal, in her most substantial role since "Secretary," does a fine, unshowy job of limning Sherry's faults without alienating the viewer or pleading for sympathy.
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70Gyllenhaal turns the young ex-con into an enormously sympathetic figure, but by the end there's no denying that her need for the girl is as selfish as her addiction.
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63The movie is full of freshman mistakes, but Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance in the title role is the gutsiest thing she's done since her breakout in "Secretary," and she succeeds despite serious contradictions in the writing of her character.
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50Sherrybaby is the kind of pretend-arty Sundance thing that gives indie cinema a bad name.
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Sherrybaby is by no means a terrible film...But we know exactly where the transparent action is going from word one.
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40The film as a whole is vaguely entertaining but due to the unsympathetic nature of the lead character, it's hard to emotionally invest in the film beyond that feeling of watching yet another Jerry Springer-friendly family adventure. It's simply unexceptional.
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40The problem with Sherry is that, unlike Ryan Gosling's Dan in "Half Nelson," whose humanity transcends his addiction and who is still capable, no matter how uneasily, to maintain relationships with others, she is a terminally uninteresting narcissist with a bad case of arrested development.
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A movie bursting with nothingness.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 12
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Mixed: 1 out of 12
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Negative: 1 out of 12
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LeeA.10
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Meghan3
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MichaelL.9