The Ballad of Jack and Rose: Critic Reviews

Miller's theme is innocence, the loss of it, and the reclamation of equanimity in the face of that loss, and the music she makes is haunting.

Rebecca Miller's attempt to elevate a small Oedipal story about two damaged souls into a grandiloquent epic misses by a significantly wide mark.

Suffers from a failure of nerve.

An engaging battle between terrific acting and a flawed script. Unfortunately, the actors -- including Daniel Day-Lewis, Catherine Keener and extraordinary newcomer Camilla Belle -- lose.

Indulgent, shapeless, and full of well-meant but ponderous pieties and psychologically driven mayhem.

[Lewis'] turn as lifestyle extremist Jack carries an authentic scent of tobacco and peat while much of the movie smells of the lamp.

There is something garish about watching a father and daughter struggle with the snake of incest in their ill-advised Garden of Eden.

Even with such a powerhouse actor as Day-Lewis, this movie belongs to Rose, who is sensitively played by Camilla Belle, an accomplished young actress who should have a bright future.

Mr. Day-Lewis is particularly outstanding as a man out of time and out of touch. His gaunt face (he lost several pounds for the role) registers the anxiety and futile determination of someone slowly imploding. He makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Miller can rightly be celebrated as a wonderful short-story director in that her gift for detail mines the particular intimacy of its characters even as it delivers works of mythlike mood.

An absorbing experience.

The film disappoints, partly because it inspires such large expectations.

Doesn't succeed in everything it sets out to do, but as a statement about the death rattle of 60s counterculture it's thoughtful and affecting.

A potent, mesmerizing drama of a counterculture Adam and Eve and their expulsion from paradise.

It's hard not to sing the praises of The Ballad of Jack & Rose.

Explores the dangers of idealism, of belief and even beauty, with a touch that's neither overly cynical nor sentimental, even though it does slip logically here and there.

It's all strange and mildly unpleasant and self-consciously arty.

Too self-consciously offbeat for its own good.

The Ballad of Jack & Rose gets caught up in incidental distractions that lead the drama astray.

When Daniel Day-Lewis sprays lead in his new film, though, we're supposed to consider him a misunderstood romantic, a crusading outlaw. Bob Dylan keeps popping up on the soundtrack to make sure you get the point.

As indie efforts go, The Ballad of Jack and Rose pushes a lot of the classic indie audience buttons, coupled with some depressingly mainstream ones.

The entire movie seems to be suffering from the same suffocating disease as Jack.

We leave this movie hoping to see Miller and Lewis together again soon.

The premise here has terrific potential, and I felt affection for all the characters.