Philadelphia: Critic Reviews

This AIDS courtroom drama is so pumped full of nitrous oxide, you could get your teeth drilled on it.

It's less like a film by Demme than the best of Frank Capra. It is not just canny, corny and blatantly patriotic, but compassionate, compelling and emotionally devastating.

Philadelphia breaks no new dramatic ground ... And yet Philadelphia is quite a good film, on its own terms.

The story is timely and powerful, and the performances of Hanks and Washington assure that the characters will not immediately vanish into obscurity.

Moving, Oscared '90s drama fostered AIDS empathy.

Wearing its heart on its sleeves, this well-intentioned but soft and compromised AIDS drama may nonetheless perform the same function that Paltoon or Schindler's List have: Change public opinion about an urgent problem.

The courtroom stuff is unwieldly, but everything else is brave and moving.

involving but badly cliched

In the guise of piety, Philadelphia panders to a perceived straight-male majority.

Being under the PC microscope transforms Demme into the bastard offspring of Stanley Kramer and Norman Lear

Manages to be humorous and moving without being too preachy or heavy-handed.