Everything is Illuminated Critic Reviews

A film that grows in reflection. The first time I saw it, I was hurtling down the tracks of a goofy ethnic comedy when suddenly we entered dark and dangerous territory. I admired the film but did not sufficiently appreciate its arc.Read the full review

For one of those obstreperously original books that are themselves impossible to translate, Everything Is Illuminated is impressively well lit.Read the full review

Though not as far-reaching as the book from which it was adapted, Everything Is Illuminated is a movie with wit, warmth and unabashed emotion.Read the full review

An almost screwball comedy that turns serious.Read the full review

Wood's powerlessness to break out of the emotive straightjacket hands the picture to his Russian costars on a platter, and they run with it.Read the full review

Schreiber takes Foer's sprawling, multilayered, multigenerational beast and hones it into a post-Glasnost buddy picture; a polished nugget of a road movie, focused mainly on Alex and Jonathan's growing sense of identification with each other and with their origins.Read the full review

Not everything is illuminated in his (Liev Schreiber) version, but the book's humanity and humor shine through.Read the full review

Leave it to Liev: Schreiber capably adds writer-director to his impressive resume with this winning take on the Jonathan Safran Foer novel.Read the full review

Everything Is Illuminated hasn't been adapted so much as gutted, stuffed, and mounted.Read the full review