Austin Chronicle by Kimberley Jones

God Help the Girl is not so perfectly crafted, but the promise – oh, the promise is irresistible.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

No one comes out and says that music is the language of the soul, but no one has to. We see it happening right before our eyes.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Brad Wheeler

God Help the Girl is about aspirations and goals, musical or otherwise. Murdoch is working some things out here, gracefully on the whole. His own band has toggled between frail sincerity and pop mastery itself over the years. The former is more endearing and original, but it’s not for everyone. Which is how I might describe his film.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

The film's conceit - mopey strangers meet, form a band, and take to the dance halls - has a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney let's-put-on-a-show innocence, and exuberance.

The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

God Help The Girl is, in other words, a spotty movie — sometimes silly, sometimes dead serious. It is, however, nobly spotty — inconsistent in a way contemporary productions rarely are, its shortcomings the result of an excess of creative energy, rather than a lack thereof.

Village Voice by Serena Donadoni

Browning captures Eve's weariness and enthusiasm, and her lovely voice and crisp delivery gives Murdoch's labored lyrics a vulnerable immediacy.

Arizona Republic by Barbara VanDenburgh

It's adorable. It's also very thin. There's a disconcerting literalism to the songs' dramatic representation that chokes the drama.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Bilge Ebiri

It’s an inviting, approachable world that Murdoch creates for us — still a total fantasy, of course, but one with a veneer of plausibility. Get on its wavelength, and you’ll be utterly charmed. Don’t, and you’ll run screaming from the theater.

IndieWire

God Help the Girl doesn’t quite succeed in convincing the viewer to toss conventional character development out the window, it still has its moments.

IndieWire by Katherine Kilkenny

God Help the Girl doesn’t quite succeed in convincing the viewer to toss conventional character development out the window, it still has its moments.

Film.com by James Rocchi

Murdoch’s film is fraught with ambition and aspiration, but a little thin on talent and technique.

The Dissolve by Noel Murray

While Murdoch exhibits masterful control in a recording studio, he isn’t a natural-born filmmaker. Much of God Help The Girl feels haphazardly stitched together, with pieces missing or placed in the wrong order, as though Murdoch didn’t get all the footage he needed.

Empire

As Marmite-y as Stuart Murdoch's music, you'll find it either winningly charming or irritatingly fey. Either way, its warmth shines through.

The Guardian by Xan Brooks

God Help the Girl comes loose and easy, verging on the slipshod. It's warm and generous, verging on the sentimental; a film that crystallises the best and worst of Belle and Sebastian's songwriting skills.

Slant Magazine by Chris Cabin

Stuart Murdoch clearly knows quite a bit about crafting pop tunes, but the film's consideration of the work of songwriting is totally flippant.

Variety by Dennis Harvey

It will be up to viewers to decide whether God Help the Girl is ingratiatingly naive art, gratingly inept art, or a bit of both.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

The wistful pleasures are stretched awfully thin at almost two hours in a film that blurs the line separating self-irony from tiresome self-consciousness.

The Playlist by Rodrigo Pérez

A major gaffe, God Help The Girl finds a great artist taking on a huge challenge and stumbling painfully on its ambition almost every step of the way.