70
Despite a familiar crop of lovable eccentrics and a predictably inspirational thrust, the movie resists formula just enough to achieve a surprising degree of emotional traction.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
On a Clear Day is in most respects "The Full Monty," only with swimming, not stripping, and no bursts into song or dance - only the usual canny sequencing of tears and laughter, interspersed here with fetching underwater photography and father-son issues up the wazoo.
70
By turns whimsically humorous and intelligently sentimental, but also infused with a pungent air of working-class realism.
70
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
When a feelgood formula is fleshed out artfully, going along with it can feel very good indeed.
58
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Scottish actor Peter Mullan saves a drama tangled in the seaweed of life lessons from drowning in pathos.
75
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Dellal and their cast consistently hit the right notes, and the result is an uplifting tale that you don't have to be embarrassed to enjoy.
50
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
Gaby Dellal's cynically mushy film, like "The Full Monty" and its ilk, is best savored only by its target demo: middle-classers who see one imported film a year, the selection in question requiring working-stiff melodrama and leprechaun burrs gently and lovably mangling the English dialogue.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
The kind of drama that British television used to do so well, a well-constructed, smartly observed story of ordinary people learning how to communicate with one another.
67
Against all reason, this workingman's journey across the sea winds up seeming every bit as inspirational as the filmmakers intended, entirely because Mullan's grit validates every cornpone emotion. With a lesser actor, the movie would sink like a stone.