Moonlight Mile

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Not many movies know that truth. Moonlight Mile is based on it.

Washington Post Staff (Not credited)

It's a combination of good story, nice moments and appealing texture.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Quirkily likable comedy-drama about a family trying to coping with loss, contains three of the best performances you're likely to see in an American movie this year.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Both funny and telling about the messy passages of grief.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

A dazzling true-life comedy that might be the funniest movie about grief ever made.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Understands that extreme feelings bring out weird reactions. Tension and sadness will occasionally be interrupted by humor -- even slapstick.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The first half of Moonlight Mile feels like the runaway trailer for a movie that can't wait to jerk your tears. But to quote Joe in a moment of epiphany, there's a ''truth enema'' out there, and, boy, it really brings this movie around.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The film drips with honest emotion and confusion.

TV Guide Steve Simels

An occasionally surreal meditation on coping with loss, and a love story with a dark side the size of Montana.

Time Richard Corliss

The film is full of sharp acting and home truths, but its ambition to be different finally surrenders to its need to be loved.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Hoffman and Sarandon work well together, and Gyllenhaal, who's carved out a niche for himself as the new face of internalized conflict, fits nicely into a role Hoffman would have made a meal of 30 years ago.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Though its conclusion is too tidily therapeutic, and though elements of its story strain credibility, Moonlight Mile has an understated, lived-in quality and a wry, unforced sense of the absurd.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

An admirable effort, but too many words, words, and more words, and not enough of the ache of that half-smile.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Inside Moonlight Mile, an honest and heartbreakingly true movie is struggling to get out.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Jake Gyllenhaal is 21 and looks as though he's going on 16. This is not a problem for films like "Lovely & Amazing" and "The Good Girl"-- It is a problem in Moonlight Mile, where he plays a grown man recovering from the murder of his fiancée.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Occasionally feels like a Neil Simon rewrite of "In the Bedroom," as it see-saws between hard truths and quirky humour.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Gyllenhaal, in the pivotal role, brings a scruffy, boyish charm to the proceedings, but his big scenes with Hoffman and Sarandon are one-sided - he's not in the same league, and comes off as a bit of a cipher.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The movie doesn't really jell. Glossy, good-looking and well-produced, it affects you and even sometimes moves you, but it doesn't really convincingly connect.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

An emotionally honest film, but it would have been far more affecting if it felt more true to life.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

What's on screen is too honest and from the heart to totally dismiss but too slick and contrived to completely embrace. This is a film that cares about genuine emotion but also wants to tame it, to tidy it up and keep it confined to quarters.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

A sentimental, feel-good look at a family in mourning, but Jake Gyllenhaal rises above the clichéd script with a brilliantly creative performance.

Village Voice Mark Holcomb

All the shell-shocked wryness, irredeemable remorse, and unaccountable will to survive that the movie attempts to embody are realized in Gyllenhaal, and the actor makes it possible to root for Moonlight Mile despite its flaws.

New Times (L.A.) Jean Oppenheimer

The film takes an incredibly wrong turn when it shifts to the courtroom trial -- It all but kills any goodwill Silberling has engendered up to this point.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

In ''Ordinary People,'' at least one character -- Mary Tyler Moore's -- had to fall so that the others could survive. In Moonlight Mile, no one gets shut out of the hug cycle.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

In his determination to lighten the heavy subject matter, Silberling also, to a certain extent, trivializes the movie with too many nervous gags and pratfalls: to the point where his heartfelt drama comes perilously close to tasteless comedy.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Eloquent acting -- in fits and starts -- can't make up for the movie's glib, off-putting calculations.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Moonlight Mile leavens the mood occasionally, but it cheapens things by insisting that everybody onscreen and in the audience leavethe theater smiling.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A movie about grief for people who don't want to be upset too badly. It's a half-a-hankie tearjerker, a meek, polite weepie.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Silberling has the nerve to play it for laughs -- This is clearly an actor's movie, but only Sarandon and Holly Hunter (as the attorney prosecuting the murderer) rise to the occasion.

Variety Robert Koehler

A movie at war with itself -- tuned into its characters' vicissitudes one moment, stumbling with awkward stabs at goofiness the next.

San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel

Too predictable and too self-conscious to reach a level of high drama.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

An insult to anyone who has tragically and unexpectedly lost a loved-one in a similar manner.

Washington Post Staff (Not credited)

There's something smarmily therapeutic about Moonlight Mile. It never really deals with the death of the daughter, who isn't a character. It seems to treat this tragedy rather like a chance to grow and feel new things. Ugh.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This movie has promising ingredients. But you'll leave wanting much, much more.

Slate David Edelstein

I'm at a loss to account for how OFF this film is -- how a movie can seem so conscientiously earnest yet so creepily exploitive. It's like a Christmas stocking over a crematory.