In America

New York Post Megan Lehmann

It's a wistful yet penetrating film, shot through with magic realism and life-affirming humor, that gets you deep down where you live.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

In America is not unsentimental about its new arrivals (the movie has a warm heart and frankly wants to move us), but it is perceptive about the countless ways in which it is hard to be poor and a stranger in a new land.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Jim Sheridan's miraculous In America, a generous but never sentimental fable of Irish immigrants in '80s New York, may be the great movie of 2003.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Has a warmth that’s utterly enchanting, and a tenderness that’s genuinely touching. This is a real gem.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

In America is the most unexpected and personal triumph yet from Jim Sheridan.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Magic suffuses this film -- performances that approach perfection, or achieve it, moments of exceptional grace as a troubled family plays out a contemporary version of a classic immigration saga, healing itself in the process.

Newsweek David Ansen

The movie's slight, anecdotal structure is deceptive; you wouldn't guess how big an emotional wallop it packs.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

It is that rare find: a film that is as emotionally truthful as it is satisfying.

Slate David Edelstein

The miracle of the movie is the Bolger sisters, who are so direct and matter-of-fact that they hardly seem to be acting. But their simplicity is radiant.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

These people and the tale of their migration and reintegration into life’s ebb and flow will remain with the viewer long after Johnny's and Sarah’s green cards expire.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Wondrously emotional film, one that sneakily dismantles your defenses and purges grief you didn't realize you had.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Family life rarely is portrayed with such warmth, clarity and vibrancy as in In America.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Touching, but not cloying, uplifting and hopeful but never sappy and also just plain funny. There is not a false note among the five core performances, nor a false word in Sheridan's script.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a fresh-hearted film that only frustrates when you sense how close it is to being exceptional.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Layered with elements that are both amusing and touching but never threatening to collapse into a big heap of sentimental mush.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It is kept watchable and empathetic by the energy of the superb performances and the sense of complete freshness.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

In Sheridan's warm and glowing treatment, the moral of the story feels less like a reheated fable than like something utterly, indescribably original.

Chicago Reader Meredith Brody

The result is a blend of kitchen-sink and magical realism: sentimental, but well acted and freshly observed.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

In the end, is In America slight in its sentimentality and manipulative in its moral? Sure, but that's the job of any fable or myth.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

An emotional wipeout.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

When you see a director going for that lump-in-the-throat mood, instinct takes over and you want to dig in your heels. Sometimes it's best just to let yourself be swept away.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The acting is uniformly superb.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Has moments of biting tenderness, yet the movie made me wish that Sheridan had let in more of America.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If you're looking for a bit of an uplift, you could do worse among the gloom of so many holiday dramas.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The script expertly captures kids' behavior.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

But there are so many beautiful, tender moments in In America -- that it's easy to forgive Sheridan's manipulative ploys.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Thanks to Jim Sheridan's graceful, scrupulously sincere direction and the dry intelligence of his cast, In America is likely to pierce the defenses of all but the most dogmatically cynical viewers.

Time Richard Schickel

Emma Bolger is -- no other word for it -- magical in the role...In her way she encapsulates In America's virtues. It's a realistic movie, but one that's always aware that transformative hope may be just around the corner.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

While In America doesn't convince as an immigrants-in-the-U.S. story, it resonates powerfully as a portrait of grief and reconciliation.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Like a kid playing make-believe, In America is blithely confident of its own contrivances; it only benefits from a certain unselfconscious naïveté. And as with a misjudged Christmas gift or a mawkish sympathy card from a kindly relative, one can hardly doubt its uplifting intentions.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A recklessly emotional film that is so committed to feelings it occasionally overflows its banks. Which may be a little messy, but it's a lot more welcome than the drought-stricken alternatives.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Warm and borderline sentimental...also brimming with true and privileged moments, as well as an optimism in the face of tough circumstances that serves as a corrective to some of the more fashionably grim modern accounts of similar stories.

Film Threat Bob Westal

Contains enough magic and sincerity to cover the proverbial multitude of cinematic sins. And, better yet, for all the Irishness, it contains not a single alcoholic and not one barroom brawl!

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The film is not emotionally subtle, but it is beautifully shot, by cinematographer Declan Quinn, with a grainy, impressionistic eye that mimics a perpetual dance of shards of remembered experience.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

It's hard to dislike a film that wants to say that the bereft have to move on with their lives, that death is part of living, and that poverty is a state of mind. But it's not impossible.

Film Threat Merle Bertrand

Definitely designed to tug on its audience's heartstrings, a task at which it completely succeeds, In America is ultimately a solid, if unspectacular family film.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Fortunately, there are more than enough moments when the heavy-handedness gives way to the sheer bliss of ordinary magic.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The film is marvelously acted -- the Bolger sisters are a delight -- and Sheridan captures New York City's crazy energy as only an newcomer can.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The story has too many trite moments, but strong acting and a goodhearted attitude keep it afloat.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It has its charms, but fails to strike a similar emotional chord.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

In short, the Sheridan of In America wants us to pity his characters for the rough ride that they endure, yet at the same time he traps them inside a bubble of the picturesque and the outlandish. Even if you like this movie, you have to ask: What has it done to deserve its title? [1 December 2003, p. 118]