| 88 |
New York Post
Lacks the humor and charm that fills the book and makes it so much more than a catalog of suffering.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
True to the book's squalor but also finding honest humor where it can.
|
| 85 |
TNT RoughCut
I didn't want it to end. I could have easily sat there for another two-and-a-half hours to find out what happens next.
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
At times an uneasy mix of cold-eyed neorealism and soft-headed sentimentality, but after its initial struggles it presents itself as a moving film, made with loving craft, a painterly eye and luscious language.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Examiner
The author calls the movie "perfect" - reassurance that the director hasn't tried to pull any fast ones.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Haunts the conscience, troubles the spirit.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
The question is not whether the movie exactly duplicates the experience of the book, but whether the movie stands on its own. Angela's Ashes clearly does.
|
| 75 |
Charlotte Observer
It really gets gloomy.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
Something of Angela's Ashes does gets lost in translation -- mainly, its fiercely funny voice.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Parker has honored the core of the work and in the process turned a great memoir into a memorable movie.
|
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
If this beautifully made if flawed film sends people back to his book, it will have done good work for sure.
|
| 70 |
Salon.com
Dramatic, massive in scale, at times very moving. And yet, somehow, it comes up short in terms of essential poetry.
|
| 70 |
Variety
Artfully evokes the physical realities of Irish poverty, but mostly misses the humor, lyricism and emotional charge of Frank McCourt's magical and magnificent memoir
|
| 63 |
Chicago Sun-Times
What is wonderful about Angela's Ashes is Emily Watson's performance, and the other roles that are convincingly cast.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
While the film dutifully reproduces many incidents from the book, it lacks the spirit and vitality of its source. And - no small problem - it lacks McCourt's voice knitting the vignettes together.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
Not since the latest fashion layout flirted with arty desolation, has misery looked this fabulously pristine.
|
| 60 |
Newsweek
As well-crafted and sensitive as it is, the movie remains one step removed from inspiration.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Parker's adaptation is meticulous, unsentimental, beautifully acted-- but nearly two and a half hours worth of dying babies, rain-spattered streets, ragged children and filthy, bug-infested rooms is a bit oppressive.
|
| 59 |
Mr. Showbiz
If Parker had aimed more at capturing the author's unique voice, and worried less about getting the details right, his movie might have been extraordinary as well.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It's the first film I know of in which we get to see all five of the top-billed actors vomit
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
As with so many recent literary adaptations, it was the writing that was the art, not its infrastructure of plot and character.
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
For those who adore McCourt's work, Angela's Ashes will most likely disappoint; for those unfamiliar with this inspiring chronicle of a survivor, it will neither impress nor dishearten to any degree.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
140 minutes of flat vignette, as dreary and uninvolving as the driving rain that never lets up on the benighted streets of Limerick.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
The end result smacks more of Hollywood melodrama than true compassion for the suffering poor.
|
| 50 |
Slate
Has anyone involved in this disaster ever heard a real story?
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
Seems populated yet uninhabited; the only real star is the gloom.
|
| 40 |
Dallas Observer
A sharp and pungent distillation of the book. However, as far as the theme of childhood under duress goes, I found "My Life as a Dog" or the stridently Irish "Into the West" to be significantly more fulfilling.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
Lacks development and dramatic coherence.
|
| 30 |
Film.com
Never more than a dull, paint-by-numbers, overly literal transcription of the book.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
If misery were inherently interesting, this adaptation starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle as a couple plagued by alcoholism and child mortality might be too.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
In the translation from page to film, the life seems to have gone out of the story
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
The effect of the 2 1/2-hour film is deadening.
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