Deep Impact

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Deep Impact confines much of its horror to television news reports and has a more brooding, thoughtful tone than this genre usually calls for.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Leder establishes a syncopated rhythm unlike anything we're used to in a catastrophe spectacle.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Deep Impact, a triple-strand ensemble disaster flick, has a few good opening minutes, the biggest tidal wave you've ever seen in the closing minutes, and a cluster of little meandering melodramas in between.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

You can enjoy the way they create little flashes of wit in the dialogue, which enlivens what is, after all, a formula disaster movie.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Unfortunately, an A-list group of actors doesn't mean a lot when there isn't much of a script.

Film Threat Chris Gore

While the film is flawed, lacks desperately needed humor and is filled with cliches, the attempt to explore the human cost of all those cool explosions and destruction is an admirable one.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The latest in Hollywood's almost biblical procession of disaster films, Deep Impact tries with moderate success to be more than just the sum of its special effects.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

You may feel safe in your bed, but be warned: even as you sleep, Earth is under threat from a vast, overheated surplus of character actors.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

To its credit, the movie eschews cheap dramatics, but at times it eschews dramatics altogether.

San Francisco Examiner Walter Addiego

This Paramount-DreamWorks collaboration, with Stephen Spielberg credited as executive producer, is competently made, strongly focused on its characters' relationships and surprisingly light on special effects.

Variety Todd McCarthy

The season's first comet-targets-Earth special effects extravaganza is spectacular enough in its cataclysmic scenes of the planet being devastated by an unstoppable fireball, but proves far from thrilling in the down time spent with a largely dull assortment of troubled human beings.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

A three-hankie weeper in disaster-movie drag, and its tear-jerking bull's-eyes are separated by long stretches of tedium.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Deep Impact is the work of someone crass enough, and in some essential way mad enough, to try to turn the apocalypse into a tear-jerker.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Joshua Klein

If director Mimi Leder is really guilty of anything, it's of wasting three first-rate actors (Morgan Freeman, Vanessa Redgrave, and Robert Duvall) in underdeveloped roles while allowing Leoni's shell-shocked, unconvincing turn to become an embarrassment.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Deep Impact takes the high road and offers up more tearful reunions than actual fireballs and more egregious, sappy dialogue than you can shake a tsunami at.

Dallas Observer Peter Rainer

The film is often unintentionally silly, and it might have been better if it tried to be.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin's straightforward script and Mimi Leder's toneless direction make this attempt so boring that the titles counting down the months, weeks, and finally hours to impact are best used to gauge how soon the movie will be over.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

These folks are so blase, you'd think that scientists had predicted pennies from Heaven instead of world's end within the year.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

For a suspense drama, Impact is a slack, oddly enervated and mawkish soup of largely lethargic performances.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Mimi Leder shows none of the vigor she exhibited when directing for E.R., and screenwriters Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin betray a real aptitude for hack work.