| 100 |
TV Guide
Jordan and McCabe's real triumph here, however, is the tenderness with which they imbues "Kitten," and the astonishing grace with which the extraordinary Murphy pulls it off.
|
| 100 |
Premiere
Playful, poetic, shocking, saddening, and ultimately gratifyingly and honestly big-hearted.
|
| 91 |
Portland Oregonian
[Murphy] makes a thrillingly flesh-and-blood creature of Kitten, with her yearning, her droll, self-deprecating wit, her breathless romanticism and her puckish vibrancy. It's easily the most fun bit of screen acting this year, and as rich and nuanced as the lead in any drama.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The movie is like a Dickens novel in which the hero moves through the underskirts of society, encountering one colorful character after another.
|
| 80 |
The New Republic
It is the central performance that holds us. Cillian Murphy glows.
|
| 80 |
Dallas Observer
For Jordan, this is a return to top form.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Cillian Murphy gives a tour de force performance.
|
| 80 |
Newsweek
Jordan is always best on his native Irish turf, and he's in grand mischievous form in this picaresque fable.
|
| 80 |
Film Threat
If you like your boys pretty and your stories incredible, this movie is for you.
|
| 75 |
Rolling Stone
In substance and style, the movie is more than a few tears short of Jordan's "The Crying Game." But Murphy is an actor to watch. Even in heels.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Cillian Murphy plays a hyper-feminine transvestite who spends much of the movie traipsing about an increasingly violent landscape in search of his long lost mother. His whirligig encounters, political and sexual, rarely soar.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
Thanks to Jordan's bravura storytelling, Breakfast on Pluto is one of very few movies this year truly worth remembering.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Jordan unites his favorite actors -- Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, Ian Hart and Brendan Gleeson -- with the swoony presence of the talented 29-year-old Cillian Murphy.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Known for his visual images, Jordan outdoes himself in "Breakfast,'' a feast for the eyes.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Jordan remains faithful to the looney sensibility of a hero, who is hard to take, but in his refusal to acquiesce to the social humdrum, is like a saint, or at least an artist.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
In a year overcrowded with wonderful performances by lead actors, Mr. Murphy's immensely appealing turn ranks among the strongest.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
A charming, winsome slice of Seventies pop kitsch reconceived as a kind of Knight-errant quest for that holiest of all grails, dear old mom.
|
| 67 |
Baltimore Sun
At over two hours, Breakfast on Pluto is too much of a merely pretty and pretty good thing.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
Ambles along nicely, but feels as if it's never going to end.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
However great Murphy is in this film, even greater is Liam Neeson as Father Bernard.
|
| 60 |
Washington Post
Although "Pluto" has a rollicky, endearing air, it's cooler than Jordan's other films.
|
| 60 |
Empire
This has charm and glamour but little profundity.
|
| 60 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Though he (Jordan) directs with admirable skill, his usual touches don't drive the film--which occasionally threatens to lose its shape.
|
| 60 |
Slate
A more down-to-earth actor would sentimentalize Breakfast on Pluto and make for an awkward fit with its peculiar mix of tones. Murphy's strangeness--his chill estrangement--makes his campy "Kitten" persona more poignant.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Murphy's breathy, high voice as Kitten feels forced, but not nearly as much as the film's efforts to be both whimsical and weighty.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
In the end, his (Patrick) disaffection make him a singularly uninvolving character, and his disengagement makes him seem alternately shallow, selfish and perverse.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
Cross-dressing and the Irish Troubles don't mix well in Neil Jordan's cloying, fanciful Breakfast on Pluto.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
Jordan is trying for a surrealist romp, and it's as coy and callow as you'd expect from a movie with a lead character nicknamed Kitten.
|
| 50 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Tedious portrait of a troubled Rolling Stone.
|
| 50 |
Variety
Despite numerous surface pleasures, including a beguiling pop soundtrack and presence of rising star Cillian Murphy in the lead role, dramatic shortcomings spell a mixed overall reception.
|
| 50 |
Charlotte Observer
Breakfast on Pluto, like its cross-dressing heroine, is appealing yet irritating, fun company at times but just as often a bore, occasionally quite touching yet frequently fey and self-indulgent.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Some road pictures take you somewhere. Breakfast on Pluto, from its archly poetic title on down, promises a lulu. Yes, well. Promises, promises.
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
Jordan lets slip virtually every rudiment of drama. He never deigns to develop his characters, he coats the movie in a wet blanket of whimsy, and he lets pop songs do his work for him more lavishly than Cameron Crowe did in "Elizabethtown."
|
| 25 |
Miami Herald
Despite the movie's bouncy ebullience (courtesy of a terrific period soundtrack) and dashes of fantasy, the film quickly becomes an endurance test.
|
| 20 |
Wall Street Journal
Breakfast on Pluto, with an impressive cast that includes Liam Neeson and Brendan Gleeson, deploys its whimsy in many ways, all of them cloying.
|
| 10 |
Village Voice
May be Jordan's wildest mis-shot yet, so dense with dying fizzle and limp ideas that I began to wonder if Jordan has an evil twin, or if there are in fact several Neil Jordans, among them at least one literate stylist and one humor-handicapped village idiot.
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