| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
An exceptionally touching and provocative love story. [15 January 1999, Calendar, p. F-4]
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
More of a physical achievement in moviemaking than a piece of storytelling, but I do recommend it on that basis. [15 January 1999, Friday, p.A]
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
The sweetest little movie about a neurological disorder that we're ever likely to see.
|
| 63 |
ReelViews
Offers solid entertainment, it's too uneven to be considered memorable.
|
| 50 |
Washington Post
A love boat afloat on the vast cinematic ocean that sloshes back and forth between the stinko and the fabulous.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
Val Kilmer, clearly pleased to be entering the Oscar disability sweepstakes, does what he can as the hunk who learns how to see.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
The movie takes fascinating material and transforms it into a routine soap opera.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Its moments of fascination and its good performances are mired in the morass of romance and melodrama that surrounds it.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Examiner
It's a movie drenched in narcissism and wish-fulfillment, almost a textbook on how to make a formulaic, romantic film.
|
| 50 |
Rolling Stone
May be only loosely true, but it is thoroughly Hollywood.
|
| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Director Irwin Winkler (Night and the City)is rarely better than pedestrian in handling this story. At worst, the dramatic elements are plain clumsy.
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
Here's a romance without a spark of excitement.
|
| 40 |
Variety
Lael Loewenstein
Although it's notoriously difficult to play a romance involving one partner's disability or illness without resorting to sentimentality, Kilmer acquits himself admirably.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
The pace is so plodding and the dialogue so unwaveringly banal … that the film can't rise to the extraordinary sensations it means to capture.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
For all the tear-jerking plot twists, it's a glumly dry-eyed affair.
|
| 38 |
USA Today
If "You've Got Mail" jangled your nerves with its Starbucks-fueled cuteness, here's a romance that goes down like instant decaf. [15 January 1999, Life, p.18E]
|
| 30 |
Austin Chronicle
Director Irwin Winkler and his cast obviously hope to shed light on the boundaries of love, and instead come up with a walloping case of the preachies.
|
| 30 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
It's drainingly mediocre.
|
| 30 |
LA Weekly
Even when the film does strike some genuinely heart-tugging notes, they’re invariably shattered by such ham-fisted lines as “You really are blind.” At times, it’s enough to make you wish you were deaf.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
It's sheer piffle, a disingenuous romance with Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino that's all sap and no sizzle.
|
| 20 |
Village Voice
The film slips into a coma early on and never awakens.
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