The Squid and the Whale Critic Reviews

In hovering, The Squid and the Whale becomes its own realistic display of family entropy, as cautionary as it is educational.Read the full review

Both sharply comical and piercingly sad. Mr. Baumbach surveys the members of the flawed, collapsing Berkman family with sympathy but without mercy, noting their individual and collective failures and imperfections with relentless precision.Read the full review

Acutely observed, faultlessly acted, graced with piercing emotion and unsparing honesty, it will make you laugh because you can't bear to cry.Read the full review

This is one cinematic novella that stays with you for quite a while.Read the full review

All I know is, it is better to be the whale than the squid. Whales inspire major novels.Read the full review

The young actors' performances are particularly haunting.Read the full review

Without jerking tears or reducing the acid content of his wit, Baumbach's humane movie gets under your skin.Read the full review

It's an unflinchingly raw and honest look at a family splitting apart, and it seldom strikes an unconvincing or inauthentic note. Though it surveys rocky adolescent emotional terrain from the safe distance of adulthood, The Squid And The Whale still resonates with the sting of a fresh wound.Read the full review

This story doesn't just belong to them anymore. This richly observed, sometimes heartbreaking movie has become ours, too.Read the full review