Everything Is Illuminated

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A film that grows in reflection. The first time I saw it, I was hurtling down the tracks of a goofy ethnic comedy when suddenly we entered dark and dangerous territory. I admired the film but did not sufficiently appreciate its arc.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Rambles and sometimes wobbles like a runaway movie. But Schreiber's instincts keep the film frolicsome and vital.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

For one of those obstreperously original books that are themselves impossible to translate, Everything Is Illuminated is impressively well lit.

Empire Damon Wise

A thoughtful approach to a much-covered topic, mixing prickly issues of roots and genocide with an eye for the surreal and an ear for the earthy.

San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson

An almost screwball comedy that turns serious.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Though not as far-reaching as the book from which it was adapted, Everything Is Illuminated is a movie with wit, warmth and unabashed emotion.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Actor-turned-first-time-filmmaker Liev Schreiber tosses out most of what made Jonathan Safran Foer's too-clever-by-half debut novel so precious, rooting out the heart of Foer's story from the precocious bombast.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

I have misgivings about Schreiber's use of the well-worn "I'll make you empathize with these Others, but first let's have laughs at their expense" approach, but eventually I was won over by his humane, moving road trip.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Not everything is illuminated in his (Liev Schreiber) version, but the book's humanity and humor shine through.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Schreiber takes Foer's sprawling, multilayered, multigenerational beast and hones it into a post-Glasnost buddy picture; a polished nugget of a road movie, focused mainly on Alex and Jonathan's growing sense of identification with each other and with their origins.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Leave it to Liev: Schreiber capably adds writer-director to his impressive resume with this winning take on the Jonathan Safran Foer novel.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Wood's powerlessness to break out of the emotive straightjacket hands the picture to his Russian costars on a platter, and they run with it.

Time Richard Schickel

This often vivid movie, though it doesn't quite attain its highest intentions, is well worth seeing. And thinking about.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Though Wood is the star, it's Hutz who is the indelible presence.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

There's a daring to Everything Is Illuminated that commends it somewhat more than its achievement deserves.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Whimsically conjures the magic-realist imagery of the novel while pruning the book of its narrative undergrowth. What results is a striking piece of topiary shorn of its vital branches.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Schreiber has one major casting coup in Eugene Hutz, the New York-based Ukrainian/Gypsy/Punk musician who plays Alex.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

And although Schreiber's hip, intelligent eye is a nice match for Foer's hip, intelligent pen, his movie strays from its own history, creating instead a world, as Alex would say, that is "once-removed."

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Everything Is Illuminated hasn't been adapted so much as gutted, stuffed, and mounted.

Washington Post Hank Stuever

A clinically adequate, occasionally above-average art house film. In certain moments, it has all the subtlety and illumination one should ever need.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Schreiber's directing is ambitious, but it is nowhere near the originality and truth in his acting. Throughout the film we can feel him striving to control, to invent, to glisten.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

Schreiber's edits gut the story of its power and punch. His film is strong on comedy and farce, enjoyable as a quirky-friendship gag, but it fails in its attempt at tragedy.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The presentation has verve. But the story is confusingly told - everything is NOT illuminated - and, as the seeker, Elijah Wood is a big blank.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The problem -- aside from the fact that one of the best things about Foer's story is its irreverent, intricate, just-maybe-brilliant writing -- is what Schreiber has decided to cut.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Alternately mawkish and strident, with lots of fades to white and dog reaction shots, this can be recommended only for its good intentions.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Has a haunting afterglow, one that neither satisfies nor illuminates, but at least keeps the flame alive.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This movie is sloppy and disjointed - an unsatisfying melodrama built upon a shaky foundation of contrivances, coincidences, and plot holes.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Foer's ironic ideas have a lovely roundness to them, and somehow the film achieves Holocaust-fiction balance without much ado or melodrama. It may be substantially less ambitious than its source material, but that may be what saves it from implosion.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Taken on its own, without comparison with its literary source, the movie, Mr. Schreiber's first as writer and director, is thin and soft, whimsical when it should be darkly funny and poignant when it should be devastating.

Slate David Edelstein

Everything Is Illuminated is not a fiasco, but in some ways I'd have preferred a fiasco—something overreaching and inchoate instead of this self-consciously artistic mood piece.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Snaps to life too late. But at least there IS life in it. It doesn't hold together as a piece of filmmaking, but there's no doubt it comes from somewhere close to Schreiber's heart.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Wood, whose mostly mute turn is defined by his black suit and glasses, can only stare in stupefaction at Schreiber's jittery mix of broad laughs and sentiment. Audiences will share the feeling.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It's as if two-thirds of the book have been reduced to one-word chapter headings.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

But the parts of Foer's lively novel that didn't get cut in the script stage have died on the way to the screen. To be fair, it's not an easy novel to adapt.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Liev Schreiber's film version of "Everything Is Illuminated" achieves the impossible — it's even more annoying than Jonathan Safran Foer's gratingly precocious novel.