Phoebe in Wonderland

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Phoebe in Wonderland happens to be at least partly a Lifetime movie, but this special little film is no disease-of-the-week tear-jerker.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

The mesmerizing performance of Fanning as the gifted and troubled young Phoebe sparks the picture.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

There's too much "problem, solution" to Phoebe, although the movie's anxieties are believable enough to earns the moments of uplift. The film may be too concerned with being a crowd-pleaser, but it least it makes the crowd suffer a little along the way.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

There's an unconvincing warm, fuzzy happy ending, in which recognition is treated as cure and understanding heals all. But, until then, Phoebe in Wonderland is an involving and empathetic drama of mothers and daughters.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's a delicate, intelligent movie about modern parenthood and the pressures that children face, and it features a cast of talented actors who were clearly committed to the movie's message.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Let Clarkson and Fanning take you to the rabbit hole of seductive enchantment that defines this movie. And don't ask what to do -- jump.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

So realistic are Phoebe's quicksilver emotions that at first it doesn't seem Fanning is acting at all. That helps to ground the film, which swings seamlessly from the world of grown-up expectations to that of childhood reverie and rebellion.

Film Threat Jamie Tipps

Director Daniel Barnz produces an enjoyable film that reminds us that imagination is a precious commodity which adults need to nurture by allowing kids to jump.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

Writer-director Daniel Barnz's film is profoundly stirring, if also occasionally maddening.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Phoebe in Wonderland gradually loses its grip on tone and believability, climaxing with a show-must-go-on moment that's just plain silly. Thankfully, Barnz knows exactly where to end his film: on the face of a girl, and an actress, at the crossroads.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Elle Fanning is wondrous in Phoebe in Wonderland. But the movie is an uneven, unfocused amalgamation of ideas and moods that is at times deeply moving nonetheless.

Slate Dana Stevens

Its fancifulness is at times too clunky, its pathos too strained. But Barnz has a secret weapon, one that's 4 feet tall and looks to weigh about 60 pounds: Elle Fanning.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It's not only Phoebe whose daydreams go out of control. Daniel Barnz, the writer-director, also goes a bit flooey. There's a lot more perspiration than inspiration.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

As the school drama teacher who tries to unlock ''the real,'' Patricia Clarkson makes high theatrical solemnity funny.

Variety Ronnie Scheib

Partly produced by Lifetime, the pic attempts to elevate the disease-of-the-week movie into a moral dialectic between conformity and imagination.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Think of Phoebe in Wonderland as "A Beautiful Mind," only for kids. And with Elle Fanning, Dakota's little sister, in the Russell Crowe role of the gifted outsider, tormented by demons within.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

So much of this irritating film from first-time writer-director Daniel Barnz feels like a writing exercise it's amazing Elle Fanning, in the title role, comes off as well as she does.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Not even she (Patricia Clarkson), however, can save a movie that suffers from terminal self-enchantment.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

There are problems for us as well in Wonderland. Like its main characters, the film is having an identity crisis -- is it a parable for adults or a fable for children? Its childlike whimsy doesn't always fit with its very grown-up themes.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Soon after that the movie simply stops dead in its tracks, as though the money had run out and the project had been called off in the middle of a scene that makes no psychological or dramatic sense. It leaves you frustrated and annoyed.