Cinderella Man: Critic Reviews

How exceptional a film actor is Russell Crowe? So exceptional that in Cinderella Man, he makes a good boxing movie feel at times like a great, big picture.

Ron Howard's film about the heavyweight boxer James J. Braddock is a shamefully ingratiating old-fashioned weepie.

I've never seen a boxing movie that has so convinced me I was seeing a pro bout both real and sustained.

We're in an almost irony-free zone, where everything is exactly as it seems, and no subtexts are available for subtext-fanatics.

Crowe's burly poignancy hits you foursquare in the ribs -- right above the ticker. This feels old-fashioned, pure and meat-and-potatoes simple. It's an Irish stew movie.

If you're the sort of occasional moviegoer who feels they don't make 'em like they used to -- well, you're right. Except that Howard and Russell Crowe have just proved you wrong.

Despite the tale's dusty pedigree, Ron Howard spins a ticket-worthy two-plus hours of movie-movie entertainment.

Braddock only wants another shot at boxing to buy milk for the kids. Cue the heavenly choir.

The fight scenes hurt, not because they're edited like quicksilver or nimbly staged -- they are -- but because we are made to care so deeply for the title character.

If you used to love the movies, Cinderella Man will remind you of the movies you loved.

Crowe's performance as this Seabiscuit of the sweet science will no doubt make the middleweight Cinderella Man a contender -- an Oscar contender.

A godsend to anybody who yearns for cinema to be a bringer of good tidings.

Most serious movies live in a world of cynicism and irony, and most good-hearted movie characters live in bad movies. Here is a movie where a good man prevails in a world where every day is an invitation to despair.

Howard's relentless and flat-footed attack on our sympathies slips into monotony. The first half drags on for longer than it should, as we're told over and over that people were poor, very poor. Depressed even. Because it was the Depression.

The storytelling is fluid and gripping.

The conventional wisdom is that Howard is a sentimentalist who needs Crowe to give his films edge. I prefer to think of the director as one in the handful of Hollywood filmmakers who still know how to make mass entertainment not based on a comic book.

It's a thrilling story, all the more amazing for being true.

A grand piece of old-fashioned Hollywood filmmaking that is easily the best movie of the year so far.

Crowe gives another solid performance, and Paul Giamatti (Sideways, American Splendor) adds to his shining reputation as a top character actor by playing Braddock's lippy manager, Joe Gould.

Just an O.K. vintage fight movie.

The thing that ultimately makes it a classic in the pantheon of American movies is the way it reveals something about the idealism, strength, grace and grit of the American Dream.

Cinderella Man takes the almost impossibly perfect elements of the saga of underdog boxer James J. Braddock and fills it with emotional gravitas, wrenching danger and a panoramic sense of American life during the Great Depression.

So square it makes the original Rocky look cutting edge and Million Dollar Baby positively avant-garde by comparison.

With Russell Crowe in literal fighting trim and a splendid supporting cast, this is a boxing pic built on classic lines, and one of the best movies of the summer.

Ron Howard's Depression-era ode to second chances and noble contests, filmed here last summer, is not just another boxing movie or just another picture. It's a completely absorbing and artfully made fairy tale that just so happens to be true.