Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

This "Les Mis" does make you feel, intensely and sometimes thrillingly, by honoring the emotional core of its source material.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Les Miserables understandably cuts some of the stage production's numbers, but all of the major anthems are intact and wonderfully presented.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

Besides being a feast for the eyes and ears, Les Misérables overflows with humor, heartbreak, rousing action and ravishing romance. Damn the imperfections, it's perfectly marvelous.

USA Today by Claudia Puig

Les Misérables is sweeping, as would be expected given the scope of the hugely popular stage musical from which it is adapted. But it's also wonderfully intimate, thanks to Tom Hooper's deft direction.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Tom Hooper, who directed "The King's Speech," is not great with action and big set pieces, but he gets the job done. What makes Les Misérables work are the up-close moments when he can focus on performance and song.

Total Film by Neil Smith

Stirring and striking, Hooper's epic musical won't be wanting for awards and plaudits. Danny Cohen's cinematography is stunning and Hathaway's Oscar is guaranteed.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

Russell Crowe's pained vocal stylings (they sound more like barks) as relentless Inspector Javert can be forgiven after hearing Hugh Jackman's old-pro fluidity in the central role of Jean Valjean, hiding a criminal past.

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

Fortunately, this sprawling epic is well-anchored. There cannot be a better big-screen showman than Jackman.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

Despite its pitfalls, this movie musical is a clutch player that delivers an emotional wallop when it counts. You can walk into the theater as an agnostic, but you may just leave singing with the choir.

New Orleans Times-Picayune by Mike Scott

What we're left with is a love-it-or-hate-it film. Those determined to resist its deep-seated romanticism - or its operatic approach - will probably emerge from the theater as miserable as the film's characters. But those who are willing to give into it, and who want to take a grand cinematic voyage, stand to be greatly rewarded.

Variety by Justin Chang

Yet for all its expected highs, the adaptation has been managed with more gusto than grace; at the end of the day, this impassioned epic too often topples beneath the weight of its own grandiosity.

Boxoffice Magazine by Mark Keizer

For fans, this is exactly how the story of Jean Valjean's transformation from thief to saint should be delivered: smothered in bombast.

The Guardian

By the end, you feel like a piñata: in pieces, the victim of prolonged assault by killer pipes.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

The tasteless bombardment that is Les Misérables would, under most circumstances, send audiences screaming from the theater, but the film is going to be a monster hit and award winner, and not entirely unjustly.

Movieline by Alison Willmore

Even at a generous running time that matches this season's other giant award candidates, Les Misérables seems like it's in a hurry, skittering from one number to the next without interlude. After Hathaway's early high point, it starts to feel numbing, an unending barrage of musical emoting carrying us through Valjean's adopting of Cosette, the latter's first encounter with Marius, the battle at the barricade and a last hour that can feel like it's a non-stop series of death arias.

Time by Richard Corliss

Sensitive souls in search of wrenching emotion can be guaranteed their Kleenex moments; you will get wet. But aside from that opening scene, you will not be cinematically edified. This is a bad movie.

The Playlist by Rodrigo Pérez

While 'Les Mis' ends terrifically, it cannot make up for the largely uneven experience that comes before it. There is no doubt an abundance of passion and commitment in Les Miserables but when the musical isn't connecting emotionally -- which is at least half the time -- it's a lot of blustering sound and fury that could either use a dialogue break or an edit.

The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy

As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good.

Slant Magazine

One would be hard-pressed to describe this, despite the wealth of beauty on display, as anything but an ugly film, shot and cut ineptly.