| 100 |
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
It's a rare film that can be convincingly tender, bitterly funny, and ruthlessly cutting over the course of fewer than 90 minutes. The Squid and the Whale not only manages this, it also contains moments that sock you with all three qualities at the same time.
|
| 100 |
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
Treacherously funny and wrenchingly sad.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
Allison Benedikt
Steering clear of phony melodrama and indie pretense, Baumbach captures a crisis in one family's life that, though it shakes the foundation, leaves all four Berkmans drifting toward highs and lows unknown, each of them only dimly aware that, no matter what the movies tell us, we never really come of age.
|
| 100 |
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Squid keeps you on your toes, but payoffs will have you smiling - maybe in rueful recognition of the truth - in scene after scene.
|
| 91 |
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
Isn't easy to watch, but it's beautifully written and acted, with a sharp eye for the small embarrassments of divorce.
|
| 91 |
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Bitterly funny about divorce, it's even sharper and more original about intellectuals and their discontent.
|
| 91 |
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Baumbach captures the ways in which children takes sides in a war they can't even begin to comprehend.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
In hovering, The Squid and the Whale becomes its own realistic display of family entropy, as cautionary as it is educational.
|
| 90 |
Time
Richard Corliss
The Squid and the Whale is domestic tragedy recollected as comedy: a film whose catalog of deceits and embarrassments, and of love pratfalling over itself, makes it as (excruciatingly) painful as it is (exhilaratingly) funny.
|
| 90 |
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Both sharply comical and piercingly sad. Mr. Baumbach surveys the members of the flawed, collapsing Berkman family with sympathy but without mercy, noting their individual and collective failures and imperfections with relentless precision.
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Acutely observed, faultlessly acted, graced with piercing emotion and unsparing honesty, it will make you laugh because you can't bear to cry.
|
| 90 |
The New Yorker
David Denby
A satirical comedy--ruthless and heartbreaking, but a comedy nonetheless. The movie is also about disintegration and the possibility of rebirth. In other words, it’s a small miracle.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
It packs a hefty emotional wallop.
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
This is one cinematic novella that stays with you for quite a while.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
All I know is, it is better to be the whale than the squid. Whales inspire major novels.
|
| 88 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
If the kids give the movie its momentum, its fascination comes from a more static source -- the father.
|
| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Insightful, funny-sad memoir of divorce, intellectual style and emotional rebirth.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
Claudia Puig
The young actors' performances are particularly haunting.
|
| 88 |
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Without jerking tears or reducing the acid content of his wit, Baumbach's humane movie gets under your skin.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
A great divorce movie. It's also one of the canniest comedies ever made about a certain kind of literary pretension.
|
| 88 |
New York Post
Kyle Smith
With its dry wit and all-star household, Baumbach's movie resembles Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums" without the heavy whimsy.
|
| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Paula Nechak
Daniels gives a career-best performance.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
This story doesn't just belong to them anymore. This richly observed, sometimes heartbreaking movie has become ours, too.
|
| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
It's an unflinchingly raw and honest look at a family splitting apart, and it seldom strikes an unconvincing or inauthentic note. Though it surveys rocky adolescent emotional terrain from the safe distance of adulthood, The Squid And The Whale still resonates with the sting of a fresh wound.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Tender, cruel, and very funny, Baumbach's fourth feature turns family history into a sort of urban myth.
|
| 80 |
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
Baumbach crams an impressive amount of characterization and humor into 82 minutes.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Paul Malcolm
Baumbach weds his verbal gifts to a fresh visual acuity that brings layers of rich detail to a portrait of a family coping, poorly, with self-inflicted change.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The implied critique of progressive, bohemian parenting is devastating--wise and nuanced, with the painful hilarity of truth.
|
| 80 |
Empire
Adam Smith
Painful, funny and beautifully acted, by Jeff Daniels particularly, who gives a career-best performance.
|
| 75 |
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Jeff Daniels, an actor who is often relegated to inoffensive supporting roles, surprises with the power and intensity of his performance.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
An entertaining and perceptive film with one big problem.
|
| 70 |
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
All four of the roles are written with pungency. There is even an implication that the two adults realize the triteness of the situation and that they--the characters, not Baumbach--want to speak from inner sources, not from a script. Baumbach pulls this off with some sting and wit.
|
| 70 |
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Has so much going for it -- including intelligent performances that mesh beautifully, and a keen understanding of how seemingly small moments can rattle the foundations of families -- that you walk away from it feeling it should add up to more.
|
| 70 |
Slate
David Edelstein
The hole in the film isn't a reflection on Linney's performance. It's as if Baumbach, his hands full of oily whale blubber, didn't want to deal with an exploding sac of squid ink. And who can blame him, really?
|
| 70 |
Variety
Scott Foundas
Pic makes up in strong performances and wry observation what it sometimes lacks in narrative drive. Result is a perceptive (and unexpectedly moving) portrait of lives in crisis.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
The title refers to a diorama at New York City's American Museum of Natural History that depicts a whale and a giant squid locked in mortal combat.
|
| 40 |
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
The absence of any nuance in the father's character bespeaks the filmmaker's unwillingness to trust his audience. Making the movie may have been therapeutic for him, but I can't say the same about watching it.
|
