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Ireland, United Kingdom, United States · 2003
Rated PG-13 · 1h 45m
Director Jim Sheridan
Starring Paddy Considine, Samantha Morton, Sarah Bolger, Emma Bolger
Genre Drama
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Johnny and Sarah Sullivan are an Irish couple grieving the loss of their child, and immigrating to America in the hopes of sparking Johnny's theater career. In New York City, they live in a tenement house overrun with crime, and struggle to support their other children. Then one day, they meet their mysterious neighbor Mateo.....
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
In short, the Sheridan of In America wants us to pity his characters for the rough ride that they endure, yet at the same time he traps them inside a bubble of the picturesque and the outlandish. Even if you like this movie, you have to ask: What has it done to deserve its title? [1 December 2003, p. 118]
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
The acting is uniformly superb.
Village Voice by Jessica Winter
Like a kid playing make-believe, In America is blithely confident of its own contrivances; it only benefits from a certain unselfconscious naïveté. And as with a misjudged Christmas gift or a mawkish sympathy card from a kindly relative, one can hardly doubt its uplifting intentions.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
A recklessly emotional film that is so committed to feelings it occasionally overflows its banks. Which may be a little messy, but it's a lot more welcome than the drought-stricken alternatives.
Family life rarely is portrayed with such warmth, clarity and vibrancy as in In America.
Definitely designed to tug on its audience's heartstrings, a task at which it completely succeeds, In America is ultimately a solid, if unspectacular family film.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
Fortunately, there are more than enough moments when the heavy-handedness gives way to the sheer bliss of ordinary magic.
Emma Bolger is -- no other word for it -- magical in the role...In her way she encapsulates In America's virtues. It's a realistic movie, but one that's always aware that transformative hope may be just around the corner.
While In America doesn't convince as an immigrants-in-the-U.S. story, it resonates powerfully as a portrait of grief and reconciliation.
Warm and borderline sentimental...also brimming with true and privileged moments, as well as an optimism in the face of tough circumstances that serves as a corrective to some of the more fashionably grim modern accounts of similar stories.
A magical book transports a lonely boy to a fantastical land --- but with adventure comes danger.
Did You Remember To Lock Your Door?