Sugar

The New York Times A.O. Scott

It is both sad and hopeful, but the film's sorrow and its optimism arise from its rarest and most thrilling quality, which is its deep and humane honesty.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

In its unhurried fashion, Sugar can take its place with the best baseball movies. Where most focus on the grand slam, this one's about the life that surrounds the game and everything that comes after.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

This one slice of the American experience amounts to one of the best films of the year.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Sugar is that sweetest of films: A sensitive and memorable story that surprises at every turn.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

As the film plays out its melancholy story, we realize that what we are watching is far rarer than the usual sports flick.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A baseball movie, a stranger-in-a-strange-land movie, a movie about real people facing real challenges in the real world, Sugar is all that and more.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A film of rare intelligence, beauty and compassion.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

A moving, surprising and provocative baseball flick that rises immediately to No. 1 with a bullet on my personal list.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The result is raw and riveting.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Algenis Perez Soto plays the character so openly, so naturally, that an interesting thing happens: Baseball is only the backdrop, not the subject. This is a wonderful film.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Sugar is a near-great movie with qualities more unusual than some all-time classics. It resists cliche at every turn and puts something solid in its place: raw yet controlled observation that gives the film the form of a flexing muscle.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

There's quality, wit and emotion throughout.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Instead of hitting all the usual beats, Sugar just moseys in a mostly delightful way.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The film's style is so ''objective'' it's a bit subdued, yet this is a sports drama of total originality, as well as the most authentic inside view of the immigrant experience the movies have given us in quite a while.

Village Voice Melissa Anderson

Without a trace of didacticism, Boden and Fleck portray the insidious details of exploitation and hollow American maxims.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Sympathetic, genial and exceedingly wholesome, it's a film that, once seen, will permanently and favorably influence the way viewers regard the characters' real-life counterparts.

Slate Dana Stevens

The most remarkable thing Sugar does is give American viewers a sense of how our country must seem to a newly arrived immigrant, without caricaturing or condescending to either guest or host.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

As good as it is because of the care and skill writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck bring to it, gifts that were visible in their first film, "Half Nelson," which earned a lead actor Oscar nomination for Ryan Gosling.

NPR Bob Mondello

The filmmakers have mostly cast from Dominican playing fields rather than from acting studios -- Algenis Perez Soto, the accomplished first-time performer who plays Miguel Sugar Santos, was himself a teen ballplayer -- so game and practice sequences have an easy authenticity from the start.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This is a drama of shifting values and compromised ideals, arriving at a view of life that's wise, complicated, and tinged with melancholy.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Mainly, though, the film's strength is reportorial, sensitively exploring a theme that has grown ever more prominent with the globalization of sport.

San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel

A gripping look at the immigrant experience, with small moments as important - and visually arresting - as any on the baseball diamond.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The price of the production's integrity is a leisurely pace -- but it's a worthwhile one. Though Sugar demands patience, it deserves attention.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

A thoughtful drama about guys who have a moment in the big time before returning home to an odd reflected glory.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Algenis Perez Soto was a baseball player in real life, which helps to explain his sensitive, understated performance as Sugar. But he's let down by a manipulative script recycled from dozens of sports and immigrant movies. At least it dispenses with a Hollywood ending.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Sugar is a curiosity – too somber for a picaresque, too arm's-length for much emotional effect – and while it's interesting, it's never truly absorbing.