| 91 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
In a time when even the best of big Hollywood movies all seem to be mired in a certain nagging, unimaginative visual sameness, this one dares to take us to a place we haven't been before.
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| 90 |
New Times (L.A.)
Gregory Weinkauf
Hallström has leavened the story's bleakness with great warmth, fashioning one of the finest films of the year.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
Russell Smith
It's a consistently entertaining story.
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
Kim Morgan
Stays engaging, chiefly, through the textured, ambiguous performances of Spacey, Moore and Dench.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Beside its major virtues, it contains a vice: that one flat lead performance. Who would have thought Kevin Spacey would ever go dull on us?
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Bob Graham
It's hardly possible to overstate what a welcome change of pace The Shipping News is for admirers of Kevin Spacey.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Rita Kempley
It's worth seeing at the very least because it is so different from standard Hollywood fare.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
The choice made by Kevin Spacey in taking on the role of Quoyle in the film adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Shipping News nearly sinks it. But not quite.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
The Shipping News is good news, but not as good as it could have been.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Despite its haunting artistry and its winning eccentricities, The Shipping News is a vehicle that's still very much at sea.
|
| 60 |
Newsweek
David Ansen
Has a quiet sense of community, a wry, unsentimental sweetness, that grows on you. It's a patient movie for impatient times.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Everything has a fusty, embalmed quality: Whatever gave the novel its vitality has been smothered.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
This morbid and self-consciously literary adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer-winning novel is no crowd pleaser.
|
| 50 |
Slate
David Edelstein
Doesn't really work but has a good cast and great craggy ocean-framed scenery.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
But, lord, the characters are tireless in their peculiarities; it's as if the movie took the most colorful folks in Lake Wobegon, dehydrated them, concentrated the granules, shipped them to Newfoundland, reconstituted them with Molson's and issued them Canadian passports.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
In lieu of vaporous message-mongering, the languid, episodic narrative -- centering on hapless sadsack Quoyle (Spacey) -- streams along by the gentle force of a convincing melancholic undertow, a dejection and longing that's not so much surmounted as sustained.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Spacey is endearing, bringing his shy character to life despite glaring psychological gaps in the screenplay.
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Hasn't got quite the right sound as it did in Annie Proulx's novel.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
Lisa Alspector
This atmosphere-heavy drama, with its comfortably quirky characters, elegant performances, and ever shifting tone, is so innocuous it's not worth panning.
|
| 50 |
Variety
Robert Koehler
Seems to be playing the author's music, but like a string quartet that plays a half-beat off.
|
| 50 |
Film Threat
Michael Dequina
A passive film, playing it quiet and safe, hoping that the viewer will extend some good will towards it.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Watching the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by E. Annie Proulx on the big screen is like being on an ocean liner stuck on a glacier.
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
A limp and sodden downer.
|
| 40 |
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Kevin Spacey's pinched portrayal of Quoyle as a scared palooka rarely transcends its own artifice.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
Spacey mucks up an otherwise pretty and pleasantly vague take on E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
|
| 40 |
The New Yorker
David Denby
In the movie's best moments, the misery has a comic lilt to it. [28 Jan 2002, p. 90]
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
The final product is soft at the center, a rustic cinematic greeting card.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
John Powers
Spacey is nobody's idea of a goodhearted innocent, and I wonder why nobody has told him he'll blow his career if he keeps trying to pass himself off as Mr. Sensitive. It's time to go back to playing assholes. That's what he's good at, and that's why we love him.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Awash in hackneyed old-time secrets and hydrophobic metaphor, never consumes us as it should.
|
| 30 |
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
It's a portrayal so unconvincing it makes it close to impossible for the rest of the film to function as intended.
|
| 10 |
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
The language is leaden, the pace glacial and the characters indecipherable. It's easier to read the actors -- they all seem eager to win an Oscar. Fat chance.
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