80
Air Doll is beautifully shot and performed.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
Chicago Reader by Andrea Gronvall
The incandescent Doona Bae (The Host, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) gives a daring performance as the toy-turned-woman,
40
Japanese helmer Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ongoing interest in love, loss and souls in limbo is stretched way too thin in Air Doll, a beautifully lensed (by Taiwanese ace Mark Lee) and charmingly played (by South Korean icon Bae Du-na) modern fairy tale about an inflatable doll who takes on a life of her own. Recut to a trim 90 minutes, this fragile yarn would work perfectly and have a chance of an afterlife as a specialty item. In its present form, pic may not get much farther than the fest netherworld.
70
Overly long and occasionally clumsy, Air Doll can't be counted among Kore-eda's best. But much of it is lovely and expressive, and it's one of those films that can haunt viewers long after they've left the theater.
67
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
The film is a little too cute and scattershot to achieve real profundity, with the doll-woman too often coming across like a playfully erotic version of Being There’s Chance the Gardener, defined entirely by her absence of guile.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer by Tirdad Derakhshani
Air Doll covers some of the same ground as that other postmodern Pinocchio story, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, while avoiding its facile sentimentality.
50
San Francisco Chronicle by Walter Addiego
The idea is intriguing - an inflatable sex doll comes alive and experiences the world with wide-eyed innocence - but Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Air Doll" is only partly successful. The film's poignant depiction of human loneliness is undercut by saccharine notes and a drifting tone.
75
For 75 minutes or so, Air Doll is the lightest of Kore-eda’s movies, which include the superb “Nobody Knows’’ (2004) and “Still Life’’ (2008). Gradually, though, the tender music-box score — by one-man Japanese band world’s end girlfriend — is tinged with foreboding.