Sweet and Lowdown

Washington Post Rita Kempley

A quirky, tender, splendidly acted fable.

TNT RoughCut Spencer Abbott

Allen's deadpan humor shines through every crevice of the film, keeping the pacing sharp, the dialogue snappy, and the situations feeling real.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

(Penn)'s is a lovely, soulful performance in a movie that manages to imbue tragedy with just the right grace note of insouciance -- a movie worthy of Woody Allen himself.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Sean Penn('s) performances are master classes in the art of character development.

Miami Herald Phoebe Flowers

Penn's performance is easily the best ever seen in an Allen film.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Amazing as Penn is, Morton is his equal, creating a complete personality out of gestures, glances and unadorned bits of actorly business.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Allen draws a snappy, loose-limbed performance from Penn.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Still about as good as Allen gets, a persuasive, nuanced, and relatively graceful portrait of an egotistical yet talented jazz guitarist of the swing era, astutely played by Sean Penn.

The New York Times Janet Maslin

This is one very tuneful labor of love.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Undeniably pleasant, but British actress Samantha Morton quietly explodes it: Her performance is like nothing I've seen in recent years.

Time Richard Corliss

Samantha Morton, as Emmet's "mute orphan half-wit" of a girlfriend, is the sweet revelation. Rarely has a performer mined such complex and potent emotion from such simple materials: a smile, a shrug, an attentive winsomeness.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Funny and light, all the more potent for seeming so effortless.

Slate David Edelstein

Unexpectedly delectable.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Penn's performance is the movie's ultimate grace note. As funny and ingenious as Allen's films can get, they are rarely known for depth of character.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

It is engaging, touching, and frequently funny. Maybe because his hero is inarticulate and his heroine is mute, Allen relies far more than usual on physical comedy than on the verbal jokes that are his strongest comic suit.

Variety David Stratton

The almost wall-to-wall music is glorious, with solo guitarist Howard Alden doing a sock job. Penn, incidentally, utterly convinces in the scenes in which he's seen "playing" the guitar.

Austin Chronicle Sarah Hepola

A literate, sophisticated comedy whose humor and loss and hope linger in our hearts, like the jazz music it reveres, both sweet and lowdown.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Isn't Allen's finest work by a long shot, but an undeniable part of its fascination is trying to figure out what -- if anything, even unconsciously -- he's trying to say about how he treated Farrow.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Exquisitely designed, lovingly executed, beautifully scored and played, every hair and note in place, it's a movie full of irony, passion and bluesy riffs.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

The best reason in years to reconsider (Woody Allen).

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Penn hasn't attempted much comedy since "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," but he's masterful here.

Newsweek David Ansen

Doesn't add up to any big deal. But it's a likable, lively little ditty -- one theme, some clever variations -- that never wears out its welcome.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It's a loving and comic tribute to a musical era Allen knows well.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A real showcase for Penn, who seems to positively delight in playing a slimy, hateful character that most stars would not go near.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

A vapor trail of a comedy, comfortable as an old chair (and deliciously photographed in shades of melon and banana by Chinese vet Zhao Fei), but ultimately quaint and unchallenging.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Agreeable eye candy and ear candy, but it's too slight to reach as deep as it thinks it wants to reach.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Woody Allen's questionable toe-tapping faux-documentary.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Affectionate, melancholy and anchored by a well thought-out performance from Sean Penn.

USA Today Mike Clark

It's all very slight and only sporadically amusing, and it makes Allen's "Celebrity" from last year look even more underrated than it already is.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Penn's excellent acting doesn't raise his character above the level of familiar clichés about woman-chasing jazzmen.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

It's the prettiest movie of the year, maybe of Allen's career.

Film.com Elizabeth Weitzman

But the movie is so confused about where it wants to go, it suffers from the same identity crisis as its protagonist.

Film.com Peter Brunette

A dud. Neither sweet nor low-down enough by half.