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Snow Cake
IFC First Take


8.5

based on 15 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 8 votes
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MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Carrie-Anne Moss, David Fox, Jayne Eastwood, Emily Hampshire, and James Allodi

Alex Hughes, recently freed from prison, begrudgingly picks up a vivacious 19-year-old hitchhiker, Vivienne, while driving through Ontario. When the car is hit by a truck on the outskirts of her home town, Vivienne dies instantly. Shocked and stranded in snowbound Wawa, Alex is drawn to seek out Vivienne’s mother, an autistic woman, to talk to her in person about the fate of her daughter. (IFC First Take)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign
WRITTEN BY:	Angela Pell
DIRECTED BY:	Marc Evans
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 11, 2007 Theatrical: April 27, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	112 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK / Canada

Nominated, Golden Berlin Bear, 2006 Berlin International Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

USA Today Claudia Puig

Most noteworthy for the performance of Sigourney Weaver as Linda, an autistic woman.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman imbue screenwriter Angela Pell's characters with a quiet authenticity that's surprisingly moving.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Modest but well wrought and witty, Snow Cake is full of unexpected moments and clever observations.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

Does sidle up to the brink of mawkishness, but it pulls back so nicely into Weaver's rich, hard-headed evocation of Linda's limitations.

Film Threat Felix Vasquez, Jr.

Rickman and Weaver sell it, and the utterly heart wrenching finale is the big pay off, and the experience is worth it.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Snow Cake is dazlious, too: overly forced, a shade too whimsical, but filling a void other words and other movies haven't the nerve or errant taste to confront.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

In the end, Weaver provides a moving and sensitive portrait of one person out of an estimated 400,000 in America with this mental disorder we are just beginning to understand.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

If only Snow Cake had hewed closer to this idea of showing what an adult autist's life and experiences are like, rather than getting caught up in Rickman's rote re-awakening, it could've been as powerful as it strains to be.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The mental and physical landscape would do justice to an Atom Egoyan film, but in this film, the key dramatic moments feel as forced as they are predictable.

Variety Derek Elley

Boosted by a delish performance from Carrie-Anne Moss as a local vamp who helps unthaw the Englishman, but holed beneath the waterline by a gratingly miscast Sigourney Weaver as the persnickety autistic.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Like "I Am Sam," it is a film that tests your cynicism.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Alan Rickman holds the film together.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

An awfully tidy, infernally sparkly study in skewed blessings, made manifest by Committed Acting from Sigourney Weaver.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Never gets as emotionally involving, or persuasive, as the moviemakers intend it to.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The picture is so drab and listless that it often feels like punishment, even though Rickman gives a fine performance, one that's heartfelt as well as characteristically elegant (not to mention sexy).

The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Anna W. gave it a10:
Wonderfully witty yet full of pathos, I have watched this movie several times and I wept each time.

Chad S. gave it a7:
In the nick of time, just before "Snow Cake" has a chance to eat itself and choke on its own cuteness, the plug is pulled on one crowd-pleasing genre and settles into another populist breed of film. The transition is sudden and somewhat cruel, because the filmmaker, you suspect, has a disdain for such movies. What "Snow Cake" turns into can only be described as "Rain(wo)man". If you overlook the film's contrived(and highly coincidental) backstory, which explains how a misanthrope like Alex Hughes(Alan Rickman) would stick around with a whimsical autistic woman(Sigourney Weaver), your heart is bigger than your brain. Linda's next-door neighbor, Maggie(Carrie-Anne Moss), at first seems like an unlikely person to be living in a Canadian backwater like Winnipeg, until you realize that she's lying about who-left-who. Their fleeting romance is the best thing about "Snow Cake".

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Snow Cake IFC First Take

Snow Cake
IFC First Take