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Steal a Pencil for Me
Metascore
69 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 12 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 12
  3. Negative: 1 out of 12
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  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Leba Hertz
    100
    A terrific documentary about forbidden love in the most heinous of places.
  2. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    88
    Amazingly, many of Jack's and Ina's letters survived and -- read aloud by Dutch actors Jeroen Krabbe and Ellen Ten Damme -- serve as the thematic thread that runs through Ohayon's film.
  3. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    83
    Gentle study in human resilience and luck.
  4. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Zack Haddad
    80
    If you enjoy learning about the Holocaust and how dark a time it was, or you just like a good love story, then check this documentary out.
  5. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    75
    If Michele Ohayon's absorbing documentary didn't provide the proof, you'd never believe the story she tells about Holocaust survivors Jack Polak and Ina Soep.
  6. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    70
    There have been dozens of Holocaust documentaries, and one could well argue that the world doesn't need another. But Michèle Ohayon's Steal a Pencil for Me offers a simple human story of dignity, levity and romance.
  7. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    70
    At once tender and tough-minded, Steal a Pencil for Me offers a useful corrective to the sentimental prevailing notion that the Shoah only happened to saints.
  8. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Crust
    70
    Tells this most unusual love story with grace and compassion.
  9. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Matt Zoller Seitz
    70
    What makes Ms. Ohayon's movie special is its recognition that epic horrors don't erase private dramas.
  10. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    67
    There's incredible feeling behind Steal A Pencil For Me--enough to sustain two lives throughout unimaginable hardship--but the film doesn't bring much of it to the surface.
  11. Variety
    Reviewed by: Joe Leydon
    60
    Fortunately, helmer Michele Ohayon ("Cowboy del Amor") treats her tricky subject matter with sufficient sensitivity to keep doc from ever seeming offensively flip or overly sentimental.
  12. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Andrea Gronvall
    30
    Although their love is undeniably a blessing, I was disconcerted watching the elderly couple smile and chuckle today as they recall their daily letters and secret meetings in the midst of such wide-scale death.
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