The Florida Project
A24 | Release Date: October 6, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
92
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 44 Critics
Positive:
44
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Total FilmJamie GrahamDec 7, 2017
Poverty and poetry, delinquency and deluxe wonder… this child’s-eye view of lives on a knife-edge is terrific. Read full review
100
EmpireHelen O'HaraNov 13, 2017
Vibrant and brimming with vitality, this is empathic towards its subjects but fiercely critical of the system that victimises them. The performances of Vinaite, Dafoe and Prince will stay with you. Read full review
100
CineVueJohn BleasdaleNov 7, 2017
It's triumph is its determined optimism, even if it admits that is probably a fantasy. It's a tale of the fallen who, like Moonee's favourite tree, keeps on growing regardless. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 24, 2017
The Florida Project is a very funny, incredibly warm movie about what amounts to child endangerment. It earns its laughs, gasps and tears honestly, almost always keeping the kids distanced from unsavory situations. When that gap is bridged by a violent or protective act, the effect is devastating. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 11, 2017
In nerve, guts, heart, and mind — one of the finest films of 2017. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 7, 2017
An astonishingly fine movie about the vagaries and frolics of childhood as seen largely through the eyes of its pint-sized protagonists. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfOct 6, 2017
Indie wunderkind Sean Baker continues his celebration of communities on the margins, in a movie that vibrates with compassion and energy. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Oct 5, 2017
There’s great integrity to showing life as it is really is, warts and all. But sometimes showing it as it should be has value, too. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangOct 5, 2017
It’s the tension between hardscrabble realism and buoyant fantasy — and the understanding that they are both, in fact, vital aspects of the same experience — that makes The Florida Project so powerfully unresolved. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 5, 2017
This movie accomplishes something almost miraculous — two things, actually. It casts a spell and tells the truth. Read full review
100
Consequence of SoundDominick Suzanne-MayerOct 4, 2017
The film exudes pure humanity in every frame, in all of its messiness and splendor and tragedy, and much of that raw emotion is owed to the performances. Read full review
100
The New YorkerAnthony LaneOct 2, 2017
Baker has taken an unregarded thread of American life, from the fraying edge of the land, and spun something rousing, raucous, and sad. Innocence is not utterly lost, but its bright-purple shine has gone. Who knows what Moonee knew? Read full review
100
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 29, 2017
Rarely has a movie gone as deep into the magical resiliency and adaptability of childhood. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 13, 2017
It’s that honesty that makes The Florida Project so powerful. This is a remarkable film, one of the best of the year. Read full review
100
VoxAlissa WilkinsonJun 1, 2017
The Florida Project won’t let us look away. Nor, given its brilliance, would we want to. Instead, we laugh, we watch silently, and we’re challenged to stop simplifying people's lives so we can offer easy theoretical answers. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 24, 2017
This is a near-perfect film, and a heightening in every way of everything that was great about Baker’s last movie. Read full review
100
The GuardianJordan HoffmanMay 24, 2017
While minimal on plot, the film digs in its nails on the day-to-day struggles of poor people in America. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 24, 2017
The infectious joy of a long childhood summer is brilliantly and boldly brought to life, unfolding, like Baker’s vital last film “Tangerine,” in a vivid present tense. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 24, 2017
The Florida Project further cements Baker’s status as one of the most innovative American directors working today, but he’s also an essential advocate for the stories this country often doesn’t get to see. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 12, 2017
Sometimes infuriating but never depressing, The Florida Project doesn’t just shine a light on people rarely represented in anything but a condescending manner. Instead it brings us into their world and introduces us to its inhabitants in a meaningful way. We care about them. Read full review
90
SlateDana StevensOct 12, 2017
The film’s structure at first seems loose and episodic, but each scene serves a purpose. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 5, 2017
As in previous films, Mr. Baker mixes amateur and professional actors to exceptional effect. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 5, 2017
Kids have no idea they’re feeling wonder — just feeling it is the thing. That’s the lightning in a bottle captured by director Sean Baker in The Florida Project. Read full review
90
Village VoiceApril WolfeOct 5, 2017
Though Moonee’s story may not have a Hollywood happy ending when she’s grown and the world has been cruel, Baker has created an indomitable character who’s at least got a fighting chance. Read full review
90
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneySep 10, 2017
The Florida Project immerses us in more stories that too often get excluded from movies. It finds magic in the mundane, and reminds audiences how to look at the world through fresh, untainted eyes. Read full review
90
Screen InternationalTim GriersonMay 24, 2017
A remarkable study of poverty, family and personal responsibility, The Florida Project meticulously illustrates how life on the margins affects one impressionable six-year-old. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 19, 2017
The beauty of The Florida Project is how Baker uses a cast of mostly inexperienced actors to tell a story that feels completely, utterly real: You feel as if you’ve slipped inside of Moonee’s enchanted world, while at the same time seeing the harsh reality of Halley’s. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzOct 12, 2017
Baker mostly crafts a tiny adventure of absorbing wonder. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 12, 2017
It’s film that’ll make you wince at times, and you’ll most likely not want to see twice, but seeing it once is an experience you’ll not soon forget. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 12, 2017
A dazzling mosaic, alert to the ebb and flow of human resilience in the face of everyday crises. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 5, 2017
Despite a seemingly straightforward slice-of-life storyline, The Florida Project achieves something rare and magical: presenting existence from the perspective of a young child while, at the same time, providing enough “clues” that viewers are able to decipher what’s really going on. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 5, 2017
Willem Dafoe should be on top of Oscar's Best Supporting Actor list for his stellar work in The Florida Project, a film that's as hilarious and heartbreaking as it is unclassifiable. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezSep 10, 2017
Sean Baker spends much of The Florida Project charging in vigorously nimble fashion up and down the stairs of the Magic Castle, in and out of its rooms, investing the minutia of the down-and-out lives within this little ecosystem with a bittersweet energy and significance. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineKyle TurnerOct 19, 2017
The Florida Project is spattered with profound sadness, with moments of externalized, violent frustration at presumed helplessness, at practically being born into all this. To what degree you believe Baker to be condescending or patronizing or exploitive is up to you, but the film’s bursts of light, its idea of what caregiving looks like when caregiving is a privilege, is handled with sensitivity. Read full review
80
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanOct 4, 2017
It’s Prince, though, who lifts the movie into another realm. It’s no exaggeration to say that hers is one of the most noteworthy child performances in recent — or, for that matter, distant — memory. She is so charismatic, and so unfailingly natural, that every one of her scenes feels organic. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 24, 2017
As a filmmaker, Baker is a graceful neorealist voyeur who thrives on improvisation, and his storytelling, in The Florida Project, is mostly just a series of anecdotes. But that turns out to be enough. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenOct 11, 2017
Depending on your perspective, Moonee is either youth incarnate making the most of her circumstances, or Dennis the Menace determined to drive the oldsters stark-raving mad. Her escapades eventually take a turn from boisterously fun-loving to downright dangerous, which kicks the movie’s low simmer into full boil. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonOct 24, 2017
A few actors with limited range are asked to do too much. Still, it doesn’t stop the momentum of this engaging, humane little movie, which builds the moment when its internal worlds finally collide — Moonee’s self-willed magic kingdom, her mother’s less hopeful reality. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 11, 2017
Dafoe delivers his finest performance in recent memory, bringing to levelheaded, unsanctimonious life a character who offers a glimmer of hope and caring within a world markedly short on both. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 11, 2017
The results in an experience that is smooth sailing for the first 45 minutes, but then hits a slog that goes on for another 40, before the movie revives again in its last half hour. Obviously, a film can’t be great if you spend 40 minutes wishing the thing would end already. A 95 minutes, The Florida Project could have been a masterpiece. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedOct 11, 2017
Eventually The Florida Project (the working title Disney gave to his dream in its planning stages on the drawing boards) sucks you into a world you would never otherwise know anything about. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattOct 5, 2017
The story begins to feel more like a series of strung-together anecdotes: an intriguing project, incomplete. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 24, 2017
What saves the movie's sobering latter developments, giving it an emotional wallop that overrides the flaws, is partly the sadness playing across Dafoe's face as Bobby watches from the sidelines. Read full review
67
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 24, 2017
Baker indulges just a little too much time shooting his young hyperactive actors in off-key locations and perhaps not enough on their character development or narrative arcs. Read full review
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