Deep End of the Ocean, The

Variety Emanuel Levy

Michelle Pfeiffer and Treat Williams give such magnetic performances that they elevate the film way above its middlebrow sensibility and proclivity for neat resolutions.

USA Today Mike Clark

Two films in one: an intriguing child-disappearance mystery and an uncommonly affecting domestic drama realized by four terrific central performances.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

So finely crafted, so alive with wonderful acting and an extraordinary commitment to realism that most audiences will be happy to surrender themselves to its improbable ride.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The emotional resolutions aren't pat, exactly. But they're not messy either, and for material this inherently volatile, that seems like a cheat.

Entertainment Weekly Michael Sauter

If the film was less than satisfying as a big-screen event, it's still worth renting for Pfeiffer, who valiantly portrays the devastating complexities of grief and guilt.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Paced more like an action movie than a drama, and, when a pause finally occurs at the end credits, we realize that it hasn't been an altogether satisfying ride.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

About two faces of healing.

Time Richard Corliss

Pfeiffer restores honor to the family drama.

The New Yorker David Denby

Pfeiffer digs into the role and won't let go. The rest of the movie is conventionally earnest.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Grosbard mercifully avoids melodrama -- the only real false notes are musical ones, from a score by Elmer Bernstein that turns familiar and trite when the film does not.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Ends up insisting on pat and overly tidy resolutions that are at variance with the emotional chaos it's nominally attempting to convey. [12 March 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Fans of Jacquelyn Mitchard's novel may find enough echoes of the book to justify the price of admission. But others can see this sort of thinly crafted melodrama in TV movies every week. For free.

TV Guide Sandra Contreras

If the movie is remembered for anything, it will be for the feature-film debut of fiercely talented Jonathan Jackson: His performance truly transcends its dour setting.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Should have worked on our emotions like a scalpel, made us cry and bleed. But, though it's an affecting, polished film, it's not satisfying. [12 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The verdict is easy: Pfeiffer terrific, movie not.

Film Threat Tom Meek

Heavy-handed melodrama that rises above its manipulative trappings on the solid performances of the cast.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

It's a classy but downbeat spin on the most familiar of TV-movie formulas.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

Never fully taps your empathy or your fears; it plays like a movie that's always about someone else.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film ultimately gives in to a case of TV-movie blahs.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

This is the kind of movie that mistakes heartbreak for being housebroken.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Though director Ulu Grosbard is as good as he usually is with most of the actors, the story problems tend to stump him too.

Dallas Observer Michael Sragow

Although the movie doesn't go in for quick fixes, it's not particularly revelatory or insightful. It's a textbook paradigm of grief, loss, and regrouping laid out in three acts.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

It’s the sort of performance that announces itself with the subtlety of a lit-up highway construction sign. Caution: Actress at Work.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A painfully stolid movie that lumbers past emotional issues like a wrestler in a cafeteria line, putting a little of everything on his plate.

Slate David Edelstein

I'm genuinely of two minds about the picture. I want to say it's subtle, but I also want to say it's heavy-handed. I want to say it's incisive, but I have too many problems with its psychological elisions to let it off the hook.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

It's not the implausibility of its plot, the shallowness of its characters, its funereal pace, its tenuous understanding of teenage behavior, its commercial-ready TV-movie-style direction, or the fact that Pfeiffer and Williams may be the most implausible Italian-Americans since James Caan -- the film is most undone by its near-complete lack of genuine drama.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It has the overwhelming stench of a film afflicted by star ego -- Michelle Pfeiffer is never wrong, which is exactly what is wrong with The Deep End of the Ocean.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The movie's a floating longboat that ought to be ignited and pushed out to sea, Viking style.