50
Like the family at its centre, Captain Fantastic is an odd bird, sometimes endearing, sometimes unbelievable.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
58
To those outside his bubble, it can look at best like a form of child abuse, at worse like a cult: the nuclear family as survivalist militia.
90
The movie really belongs to Mortensen, who allows Ben to be exasperating, arrogant and impatient but also warm, loving and caring. He’s a tough but adoring father, a grieving widower and an angry defender of his wife’s final wishes, and Mortensen plays all these notes and more with subtlety and grace.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin
Especially refreshing, even radical, is its sympathy for characters who read for pleasure and value rigorous thought. Unfortunately, by the end, it’s gone as mushy and ragged as a homespun hemp blanket.
88
Captain Fantastic isn’t only one of the year’s best movies, but one of the best cast and best acted, right down to the smaller roles.
80
Ross doesn’t run from the resulting sentimentality the way so many other directors do; nor does he undercut it with irony or sarcasm as has become the regrettable tendency in independent cinema.
88
Despite a frustrating fizzle of a finale, it’s a movie that enthralls the senses and engages the mind for two hours, proving no movie is too long when you’re having fun.
50
Captain Fantastic uses bleak but gentle comedy to pinpoint the variety of ways we wrestle with grief, but the film undermines Mortensen's performance and its own thematic ambitions by presenting the character as little more than an idealized fantasy figure.
80
New York Daily News by Stephen Whitty
Gorgeously photographed, and as loosey-goosey as its hero, Captain Fantastic takes some unexpected turns. Is Ben eccentric or irresponsible? Is he raising free-thinking iconoclasts — or training a new generation of Unabombers?