Everything is Illuminated: Critic Reviews

100%

MovieWeb: 1 reviews

67%

RottenTomatoes: 128 reviews

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Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly (Top Critic)

75

Actors talk about wanting to stretch, but few would hazard a project with such a high degree of difficulty as Schreiber.
Full Review » 7 years ago
A.O. Scott New York Times (Top Critic)

40

The adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling novel is whimsical when it should be darkly funny and poignant when it should be devastating.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Peter Bradshaw Guardian [UK] (Top Critic)

Full Review » 6 years ago
Claudia Puig USA Today (Top Critic)

75

A movie with wit, warmth and unabashed emotion.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Michael O'Sullivan Washington Post (Top Critic)

Full Review » 5 years ago
Ty Burr Boston Globe (Top Critic)

63

Fans of Jonathan Safran Foer may rightly consider this an act of taxidermy. Everything Is Illuminated hasn't been adapted so much as gutted, stuffed, and mounted.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Michael Atkinson Village Voice (Top Critic)

It may be substantially less ambitious than its source material, but that may be what saves it from implosion.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Jack Mathews New York Daily News (Top Critic)

50

Jonathan is about the most passive protagonist you're likely to see on the screen for a while.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Amy Biancolli Houston Chronicle (Top Critic)

88

It's profound in the way that life is profound in hindsight, its view of the past both fixed in history and mutable in the telling. And it's exquisitely tender.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times (Top Critic)

88

A film that grows in reflection.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Allison Benedikt Chicago Tribune (Top Critic)

63

Every novel cannot be a movie, and this one should not have been.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Carrie Rickey Philadelphia Inquirer (Top Critic)

63

If Jonathan were a character instead of a symbol of American Immigrants Disconnected From Their History, Schreiber's movie might have worked.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Jeff Strickler Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top Critic)

The ultra-serious Jonathan and the laid-back Alex are an ideal odd couple. By switching focus between them, Schreiber can quickly steer the movie to different emotional ground.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Tom Long Detroit News (Top Critic)

75

Yes, we laugh; yes, we cry; the sun rises and sets. It's all quite enlightening.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Kerry Lengel Arizona Republic (Top Critic)

90

It sounds weird, and it is. It's also very funny, not to mention mesmerizing and, finally, heartbreaking.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Todd McCarthy Variety (Top Critic)

No one seeing Schreiber's film could begin to imagine the breadth and nature of the book.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Lou Lumenick New York Post (Top Critic)

25

Schreiber's film version of Everything Is Illuminated achieves the impossible -- it's even more annoying than Jonathan Safran Foer's gratingly precocious novel.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Roger Moore Orlando Sentinel (Top Critic)

80

It's funny and warm, with the sting of the horrific event that triggered the trip giving it a melancholy feel.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Peter Howell Toronto Star (Top Critic)

63

[Schreiber] has managed something of a feat ... in spinning a single charming story out of Foer's yarn ball of a novel, which spanned 200 years, multiple stories and various protagonists.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Liam Lacey Globe and Mail (Top Critic)

63

A movie that wraps a story of mass murder in a package of whimsy, and prefers to focus on our commonality rather than any collective complicity in the crimes of history.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Stephanie Zacharek Salon.com (Top Critic)

Schreiber leaves the whimsy faucet dripping for far too long.
Full Review » 7 years ago
David Edelstein Slate (Top Critic)

There isn't enough drama here to sustain an entire film, and Schreiber's direction is relentlessly coy.
Full Review » 7 years ago
James Berardinelli ReelViews (Top Critic)

50

Everything Is Illuminated left me cold and in the dark.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Michael Rechtshaffen Hollywood Reporter (Top Critic)

A considerably scaled down version that still effectively retains the book's warm eccentricity and gently persuasive sentimentality.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Peter Travers Rolling Stone (Top Critic)

50

Wood, whose mostly mute turn is defined by his black suit and glasses, can only stare in stupefaction at Schreiber's jittery mix of broad laughs and sentiment. Audiences will share the feeling.
Full Review » 7 years ago