The New York Times by A.O. Scott

Extremely enjoyable, though a few degrees shy of perfection.

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

This is better than good, it's wonderful: if facial expressions can be compared to colors, Gedeck works with an unusually broad palette, constantly surprising us, and she helps her costars shine.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

As much as any other motion picture that employs the preparation and consumption of food as a key element, Mostly Martha provides the perfect blend of cinematic nourishment and gratification.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Thanks to Echer, Nettelbeck and this delicious movie, I was able to hear "Country" and the other Jarrett tunes in scene after scene - heightening moods, lyricizing action and making Hamburg seem like a wintry love song. Predictable or not, that's often as good as it gets.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

Add Mostly Martha to the list of great mouth-watering food flicks - "Eat Drink Man Woman," "Big Night," "Babette's Feast" -- but don't stop there. Add it to another list: movies that get at the heart of what family, and love, is all about.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

A feel-good movie that doesn't think it needs to rub people's noses in the happy stuff to get its points across or eliminate all the disturbing shades to make a uniformly glowing whole.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Paula Nechak

Nettelbeck has created a movie recipe that ladles great dollops of dessertlike joy and equally dark tragedy around her strong-willed heroine. It wouldn't work without actors capable of finding vulnerability, humanity and kindness in sometimes inaccessible characters.

Slate by David Edelstein

The German reserve and Italian extroversion are in just the right balance. The movie exists on a tantalizing border -- and I don't mean Switzerland.

Time by Richard Corliss

Nettelbeck is a sharp observer of life's surprises, and Gedeck has an appraising, intelligent beauty. Her Martha is like the film: tart on the outside, sweet on the inside, with a delectable aftertaste.

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

Sweet without being saccharine and funny without being forced, the closely observed romantic comedy treats the culinary arts as a metaphor for personal healing.

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

There's more at work in this gorgeous and affecting picture than simple culinary sex appeal.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey

It is, in short, a compendium of clichés, yet with a presentation that makes the familiar seem remarkably warm and fresh.

Washington Post by Ann Hornaday

A sweet, even delectable diversion from the more explosive cinematic fare of the season.

New York Post by Megan Lehmann

The plot is thin as consomme, and the thudding score is distracting, but the heartfelt storytelling and Michael Bertl's disarming cinematography make this a food film to savor.

The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps

Becomes precisely the sort of film its elements demand. As tearful goodbyes and joyful montage sequences set to lite-jazz saxophoning take over, "neatly winsome" trumps "messy drama" yet again.

Los Angeles Times by Manohla Dargis

It's a drag how Nettelbeck sees working women -- or at least this working woman -- for whom she shows little understanding; there's a puritan, even punitive, cast to the way she sees her character, whose pathology she digs at with the tenacity of a truffle hound.