| 100 |
Rolling Stone
It's a wild, whacked-out wonder. Coenheads rejoice.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
A wildly original movie with astonishingly varied moods and influences.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
It's a new new thing, classic myth from both literature and the movies, commingled, set to great folk music, and untrammeled by any sense of predictability, urgency, realism or believability but hypnotic, graceful and seductive.
|
| 90 |
The New York Times
It is, all in all, a rambunctious and inspired ride in which the Coen brothers' voracious fascination with the arcana of American popular culture and their whiz-kid inventiveness reach new heights of whimsy.
|
| 90 |
Dallas Observer
Clooney has become a movie star, and the Coens have given him his very own "It Happened One Night." The man, and the movie, are downright bona fide.
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
From moment to moment, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a pleasure. But when the Coens are really cooking, when the acting and the conception and the music all come together, it's something more -- Dogpatch rapture.
|
| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Devilishly delightful.
|
| 80 |
New York Magazine
This time around, though, the Coens' usual arch deliberateness isn't quite as deliberate, and there's an appealing shagginess to some of the episodes and performances.... This is the Coen brothers' most emotionally felt movie, and that's not meant as faint praise.
|
| 80 |
Variety
A charming, if lightweight, Coen brothers escapade flecked by plenty of visual and performance grace notes.
|
| 80 |
Time
Toss in enough gorgeous bluegrass music to make the movie's CD a must-have, and you have prime, picaresque entertainment.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
All I can say is this particular excursion into screwball madness is often heavenly, and frankly leaves critical explication somewhat unnecessary. Go see it and laugh.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
As a Coen brothers fan I hate to say this, but the movie's a collection of great bits and pieces rather than a complete work.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
The risk pays off for Clooney and the Coens, as O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a nicely off-kilter exploration of American gumption.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Enlivening things to an unprecedented extent, the songs turn O Brother into perhaps the warmest production in the Coens' repertoire.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
A remarkable film. From its performances on down to director of photography Roger Deakins' sun-baked, dirty-ochre cinematography, the film is all of a piece.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Joyously unhinged and outrageously inventive.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
A clever and satisfyingly abundant entertainment.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
The film is worth seeing for George Clooney's performance. More than ever he seems like a Clark Gable for our time.
|
| 64 |
Mr. Showbiz
For all its originality, O Brother doesn't seem to have a point, or enough spark to distract us from the lack thereof.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Sun-Times
O Brother contains sequences that are wonderful in themselves--lovely short films--but the movie never really shapes itself into a whole.
|
| 63 |
Baltimore Sun
While it displays its share of quirky charm, off-kilter characters and outlandish situations, this is really the first film where you can feel the Coens straining to keep up with themselves.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
Not quite as funny as it wants to be. Mostly, it's just silly. But as always, the Coens are entertaining themselves first.and their quirky individuality has served them and their fans well so far.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
Of all unlikely possibilities, the team has finally made a movie that, for them, is on the tepid side.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
The art direction is impeccable, but this is a pop-up book that I was impatient to slam.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Often clever but fundamentally shallow, this shaggy-dog story is greatly enriched by its extraordinary bluegrass soundtrack, supervised by T Bone Burnett and performed by a phenomenal collection of artists.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
For all its ambitions, though, the Coens' odyssey is a scattershot affair with too many tricks and twists for its own good.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
Remains naggingly hollow, a cerebral exercise in whimsy that isn't nearly clever or funny enough to seem like more than grand self-indulgence.
|
| 20 |
Chicago Reader
After making their two best features to date, "Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski," the Coen brothers have surely come up with their worst.
|
| 12 |
Charlotte Observer
Whenever the music subsides and the characters speak the Coens' lines, the film turns back into mush.
|
| 0 |
Entertainment Weekly
Why would filmmakers with this much talent work this hard to thumb their noses at everything they put on screen?
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