Everything is Illuminated Critic Reviews

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

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

Taken on its own, without comparison with its literary source, the movie, Mr. Schreiber's first as writer and director, is thin and soft, whimsical when it should be darkly funny and poignant when it should be devastating.Read the full review

Everything Is Illuminated is not a fiasco, but in some ways I'd have preferred a fiasco—something overreaching and inchoate instead of this self-consciously artistic mood piece.Read the full review

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

A clinically adequate, occasionally above-average art house film. In certain moments, it has all the subtlety and illumination one should ever need.Read the full review

This movie is sloppy and disjointed - an unsatisfying melodrama built upon a shaky foundation of contrivances, coincidences, and plot holes.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

But the parts of Foer's lively novel that didn't get cut in the script stage have died on the way to the screen. To be fair, it's not an easy novel to adapt.Read the full review