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Snow Cake
Metascore
54 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 15 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 15
  3. Negative: 0 out of 15
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  1. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    75
    Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman imbue screenwriter Angela Pell's characters with a quiet authenticity that's surprisingly moving.
  2. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    75
    Most noteworthy for the performance of Sigourney Weaver as Linda, an autistic woman.
  3. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Felix Vasquez, Jr.
    70
    Rickman and Weaver sell it, and the utterly heart wrenching finale is the big pay off, and the experience is worth it.
  4. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    70
    Does sidle up to the brink of mawkishness, but it pulls back so nicely into Weaver's rich, hard-headed evocation of Linda's limitations.
  5. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Carina Chocano
    70
    Modest but well wrought and witty, Snow Cake is full of unexpected moments and clever observations.
  6. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    63
    In the end, Weaver provides a moving and sensitive portrait of one person out of an estimated 400,000 in America with this mental disorder we are just beginning to understand.
  7. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    63
    Snow Cake is dazlious, too: overly forced, a shade too whimsical, but filling a void other words and other movies haven't the nerve or errant taste to confront.
  8. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    58
    If only Snow Cake had hewed closer to this idea of showing what an adult autist's life and experiences are like, rather than getting caught up in Rickman's rote re-awakening, it could've been as powerful as it strains to be.
  9. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    50
    The mental and physical landscape would do justice to an Atom Egoyan film, but in this film, the key dramatic moments feel as forced as they are predictable.
  10. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    50
    Alan Rickman holds the film together.
  11. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    50
    An awfully tidy, infernally sparkly study in skewed blessings, made manifest by Committed Acting from Sigourney Weaver.
  12. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    50
    Like "I Am Sam," it is a film that tests your cynicism.
  13. Variety
    Reviewed by: Derek Elley
    50
    Boosted by a delish performance from Carrie-Anne Moss as a local vamp who helps unthaw the Englishman, but holed beneath the waterline by a gratingly miscast Sigourney Weaver as the persnickety autistic.
  14. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    50
    Never gets as emotionally involving, or persuasive, as the moviemakers intend it to.
  15. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    40
    The picture is so drab and listless that it often feels like punishment, even though Rickman gives a fine performance, one that's heartfelt as well as characteristically elegant (not to mention sexy).
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User Reviews

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User Score
8.3 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 13 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. brajakum
    10
    Not the most significant movie dealing with the issue of autism, since it lacks the screenplay originality and power, but Sigourney Weawer is excellent as always.… Full Review »
  2. AnnaW.
    10
    Wonderfully witty yet full of pathos, I have watched this movie several times and I wept each time.
  3. ChadS.
    7
    In the nick of time, just before "Snow Cake" has a chance to eat itself and choke on its own cuteness, the plug is pulled on one crowd-pleasing genre and settles into another populist breed of film. The transition is sudden and somewhat cruel, because the filmmaker, you suspect, has a disdain for such movies. What "Snow Cake" turns into can only be described as "Rain(wo)man". If you overlook the film's contrived(and highly coincidental) backstory, which explains how a misanthrope like Alex Hughes(Alan Rickman) would stick around with a whimsical autistic woman(Sigourney Weaver), your heart is bigger than your brain. Linda's next-door neighbor, Maggie(Carrie-Anne Moss), at first seems like an unlikely person to be living in a Canadian backwater like Winnipeg, until you realize that she's lying about who-left-who. Their fleeting romance is the best thing about "Snow Cake".… Full Review »
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