Simon Birch Critic Reviews
Metascore®:
Based upon 11 Critic ReviewsHighest Rated
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- Favorite Critics
Either you stand back and resist it, or you plunge in. There was something about its innocence and spunk that got to me, and I caved in.Read the full review
The film, "suggested by" John Irving's novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany," is so unabashedly manipulative -- and implausible -- that even while crying, many viewers may also feel abused. Read the full review
Admirers of Irving's sprawling tome are sure to find Birch a botch. Read the full review
It's an excursion into a melodramatic morass that occasionally becomes difficult to sit through because it's so cloying.Read the full review
The film does not jerk tears as much as it knocks you down and runs away with them.Read the full review
It allows for little of the dark and funny in Irving's picaresque morality fable. No room! Not with the buckets of bathos thrown our way, substituting for mass-market spiritual uplift! Read the full review
A magical child movie in which the child is magical, yes, but the movie is not.Read the full review
Johnson, on his maiden voyage as director, treats every scene as if it were a bonbon, almost too precious to consume, and Marc Shaiman's score is a running series of mood cues. Read the full review
Johnson (who scripted "Grumpy Old Men") flattens out any promise so completely that the feature resembles nothing so much as a subpar "Hallmark Hall of Fame" entry.Read the full review
There's hardly a character, plot twist, or musical theme in the whole enterprise that isn't primed to go straight for the tear ducts, as if Johnson assumes that his audience is incapable of mounting a defense.Read the full review
