The Company: Critic Reviews

Watching it, I felt by turns engrossed, detached, dazzled, bored, curious, enlightened, and moved.

Robert Altman's new film, which follows a Chicago-based dance troupe through a few months of its regular season, is enjoyably lithe and droll.

It's a joy to watch these colorful characters, and their exacting, physically demanding dances, from a leisured distance.

Feels like a documentary that's missing the surprises of real life.

Essentially a doodle interrupted by nouveau ballet performances, the entire contraption assembled to please the ego of Neve Campbell.

Altman's reverence for ballet, respect for the dancing life, and even his voyeuristic view of the ballerinas' bodies carry the viewer along effortlessly.

The dances are beautiful, and the way the dancers live and interact have the ring of truth.

It gives you the opportunity to experience the daily lives of trained, very talented and temperamental performers. And it invites you to pull up a seat and watch them do what they do best.

In straining to mix the real story of ballet's demands with a romance, The Company fails to capture our imaginations.

Why did it take me so long to see what was right there in front of my face -- that The Company is the closest that Robert Altman has come to making an autobiographical film?

The film achieves that poetry of motion and lyrical delight musical films always strive for but rarely capture.

It neither adores nor disapproves of its players, which leaves the moviegoer a little clueless, and unmoved.

Altman is a master at blending ensemble casts ... but there's little he can do with these nondescript characters, who quickly blend into a faceless morass.

Altman thrusts upon the audience the responsibility of connecting the dots. But the dots don't connect, and instead of the resolution that generally follows tension, there is a feeling of having missed something.

Altman takes an elegant, appealingly unemphatic look at the world of ballet.

Altman presents a fly-on-the-wall insight into the lives of a group of people whose public face is one of unadulterated grace and beauty - but whose private existence is as disorderly as anyone's.

Altman ... whose intuition for placing the camera in just the right spot has always been impressive. In the dance scenes, it's flawless.

The measured pace of The Company could tax the patience of some, but the dancing is so well executed, and so energetic, that only the most dance-averse members of the audience would likely object.

A love letter to performers who put their egos and bodies on the line.

Robert Altman's surpassingly beautiful ballet movie feels lighter than air -- but in fact it's the great director's most tender and memorable film in years.

This is an absolutely miraculous movie.

This is a dull, lifeless production that will find favor only with those with an insider's perspective or who feel compelled to praise the acclaimed director's every film, no matter how out-of-touch and pretentious it may be.

A wonderfully vivid and engaging theatrical experience.

Altman, showing the ardor and assurance of a master, pulls us into his film with seductive power.