| 100 |
New York Daily News
It's an uplifting movie about the rewards of perseverance and community.
|
| 100 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Has a slow-burning emotional power.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
A beautiful and genuinely spirit-lifting film about poverty and education.
|
| 91 |
Portland Oregonian
If it touches up against the syrupy at a very few moments, it's nevertheless consistently clear-eyed and convincing.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
The film's occasional dips into sentimental cuteness and its too-pat ending can't cancel the gap that yawns ever wider between rural and urban society.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Zhang's work is always worth watching, but this is the first of his films in which the sorrows are so heart-rending, its many comic moments so laugh-out-loud human.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
Graham Fuller
Simple but charming.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Has a warmth and sweetness that is especially hard to resist.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
A.O.Scott
A splendid, assured piece of storytelling.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
In many ways, Not One Less resembles the socialist-realist dramas of the early Communist regimes.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
It's an excellent movie for kids, because it is about how amazing children can be.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
A sweet, lushly photographed but occasionally slow film.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Examiner
Like a Sally Field movie by Vittorio De Sica: Zhang wants to affect you with the subtle sting of his politics.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
An empowering film for children, showing them at their most capable, working through problems and finding innovative solutions to overcome what seems like an insurmountable obstacle.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
In style and story line, the film is daring in its simplicity.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
His story is simple, unadorned, direct. Only the margins are complicated.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
Phoebe Flowers
Zhang, who tried to make his actors as unaware of the camera as possible, lets the story evolve slowly and deliberately.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
This is much more than a typically one-dimensional message-movie -- it's obviously the work of a master filmmaker .
|
| 60 |
Washington Post
At first, the picture is moving. . And suddenly charm turns to quasi-commie didacticism.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Use of a loosely written screenplay and a nonprofessional cast in this picture weakens its dramatic appeal even as it lends authenticity and local color.
|
| 50 |
Time
To Western eyes, this meandering parable registers as a perplexity and a disappointment.
|
| 40 |
Chicago Reader
Its resolution reeks of phoniness and self-congratulation, even if some of the narrative strands leading up to it are fairly absorbing.
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