Phenomenon (1996) Critic Reviews

It's about change, acceptance and love, and it rounds those three bases very nicely, even if it never quite gets to home.Read the full review

Phenomenon is a fantasy about super-intelligence that works best if you can switch off your brain. Those who can will reach weepy nirvana. Those who can't will find this sticky-sweet wallow a bit, well, dumb. [03 Jul 1996 Pg.01.D]Read the full review

But this soggy, sentimental tour through a rural dreamworld of salt-of- the-earth versus supercharged intelligence never quite gets deep enough to touch the soul -- or to make sense.Read the full review

Put simply, this movie is dumb.Read the full review

Phenomenon (directed by Jon Turteltaub, the guy who sedated us with "While You Were Sleeping") would be pretty unbearable were Travolta not so consistently charming.Read the full review

Well-meaning and convinced it has something of value to say, its "Reach Out and Touch Someone" sensibility ensures that all its satisfactions will prove hollow, and so they do.Read the full review

Instead, director Jon Turteltaub has taken the easiest road, emerging with a soppy, soft-headed disease-of-the-week-style piece that sentimentalizes or opts out of every interesting issue the script raises.Read the full review

While Phenomenon attempts, tritely, to ascend into mind-blowing significance, it also plummets into a pit of sentimental mush.Read the full review

A whopping wrong turn throws this lightweight, benign-looking movie terminally off course.Read the full review