| 90 |
TV Guide
Stunningly cinematic and audacious on every level, writer/director Tim Robbins's look at the collision of the Depression-era art world and politics may well be a masterpiece.
|
| 89 |
Mr. Showbiz
Even if the great debate that pits artistic integrity against corporate compromise doesn't thrill you, see Cradle Will Rock anyway. It's marvelous, provocative entertainment; art for art's sake.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
Rock actually rocks out as one of the year's most purely entertaining movies (just keep thinking: Bill Murray as a ventriloquist).
|
| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
The movie's best moments belong to Bill Murray,
|
| 80 |
TNT RoughCut
Don Kaye
Entertaining and educational.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
Commands respect as mainstream filmmaking with more of an agenda than just pimping cinematic junk food to the brain-dead masses.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
Brings the '30s vividly to the screen.
|
| 75 |
Charlotte Observer
It's packed with such passion, humor, fine acting in small roles - there are no big ones - and vitality in the storytelling that the lesson comes across entertainingly.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It needs a study guide, and viewing "Citizen Kane" might be a good place to start.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Robbins the agitprop celebrity may be blowin' in the wind, but Robbins, the son of a folksinger, knows how to get audiences clapping along.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Some may find the movie too crowded and preachy to serve as a meaningful history lesson, but it will delight anyone who thinks our cynical age could benefit from recalling the vigorous idealism and venturesome artistry of a bygone era.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
Christine Dolen
An ensemble cast brimming with great theater actors and movie stars tears into a collection of meaty, moving, funny roles, with largely vibrant results.
|
| 70 |
Variety
Succeeds far more often than not in delivering a credible, kaleidoscopic portrait of creative, and often famous, individuals.
|
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Its nervy decision to cut as wide a swath as possible through one of the most exciting and meaningful periods of our history have created something that's impossible not to both applaud and enjoy.
|
| 67 |
Portland Oregonian
A frustrating, pedantic, cacophonous jumble of a picture, peopled with as many straw men and caricatures as living, breathing humans.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
Cradle Will Rock is the masterpiece that wasn't, a magnificent opportunity blown to hell.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
An ambitious effort that fails as satire and as history, although it probably succeeds as a cautionary tale.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Examiner
Edvin Beitiks
A fun movie, with moments guaranteed to bring you close to tears. But, like most of Robbins' work, it's a cartoon, an emotional cartoon.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
A missed opportunity to shed light on one of America's most turbulent times.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Wildly ambitious, unwieldy epic.
|
| 60 |
Salon.com
Obviously influenced by the style of Robert Altman's multi-character extravaganzas, Robbins has seized on this incident as the centerpiece in a carnival about the conflicts among art, politics and commerce.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
Historical forces and famous ghosts jostle past each other in this evocation of mid-1930s New York like harried commuters at Grand Central Station.
|
| 60 |
LA Weekly
Robbins has made a drastically different film from the one Welles envisioned -- it's wacky where Welles is absurd, cynical where Welles is canny.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
There's something stirring and gutsy about this evocation of collective ferment -- not to mention timely, in the wake of the Seattle uprising against the World Trade Organization.
|
| 60 |
Film.com
Thoroughly artificial and overly schematic, to the point of caricature even, but often lively and witty nonetheless.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
Although Robbins might have drawn some of these characters with less obviousness and more satirical bite, he ably keeps this lively, complicated film on track.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It's an interesting and likably ambitious movie with an ensemble of mostly engaging character vignettes, but, sadly, it misses its mark.
|
| 50 |
Washington Post
Cradle Will Rock is left in mid-rock, as it were, its energy squandered, its sense of history confused, its sound and fury ultimately signifying nothing.
|
| 50 |
Newsweek
Robbins eschews leftist diatribes for a bold cartoon version of history. It's as crowded and energetic as a big parade...and just about as subtle.
|
| 50 |
Dallas Observer
In the end, it's all just too damned much. It's more exhausting than edifying.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
There is hardly a moment during this overlong, stunningly smug exercise in moral self-satisfaction when you actually care about a character, real or invented.
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