Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

From Up on Poppy Hill is frankly stunning, as beautiful a hand-drawn animated feature as you are likely to see. It's a time-machine dream of a not-so-distant past, a sweet and honestly sentimental story that also represents a collaboration between the greatest of Japanese animators and his up-and-coming son.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

Your kids may will fall in love with it, if you help them find it.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

It’s all lovely and sweet, and while this story might’ve been just as engaging in live action, Miyazaki’s animation does clear away the extraneous detail, re-creating the world of 50 years ago and instilling it with the poignancy of a family snapshot.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Although simpler and less mysterious than the great Hayao Miyazaki movies, the gently melancholic From Up on Poppy Hill is still a must see at a time when family entertainment is too often synonymous with blandness.

Village Voice

This film's gentle storytelling manages to extract the emotional payoffs of melodrama without ruining one's suspension of disbelief.

Time Out

From Up on Poppy Hill — cowritten by Miyazaki, and directed by his son Goro — shows a different side of the Japanese animation house, one that finds equal wonder in comparatively mundane affairs.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

This movie...is a lovely example of the strong realist tendency in Japanese animation. Its visual magic lies in painterly compositions of foliage, clouds, architecture and water, and its emotional impact comes from the way everyday life is washed in the colors of memory.

Time Out by Sam Adams

From Up on Poppy Hill — cowritten by Miyazaki, and directed by his son Goro — shows a different side of the Japanese animation house, one that finds equal wonder in comparatively mundane affairs.

Village Voice by Zachary Wigon

This film's gentle storytelling manages to extract the emotional payoffs of melodrama without ruining one's suspension of disbelief.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

Goro Miyazaki’s film is about the point at which we decide not what we want to be when we grow up, but who, and the way the tiniest moments in our lives often have the most far-reaching effect.

New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme

It’s a film heavily dependent on tone and atmosphere for its charm, the budding relationship shown through things like a lovely twilight bike ride down a hill to the shops below.

Portland Oregonian by Marc Mohan

The animation is pretty and clean, reminiscent of other Studio Ghibli films like "Whisper of the Heart," but never achieves wondrous artistry.

NPR by Scott Tobias

It's the warm tenor of the film that ultimately rescues it.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore

It’s a lovely film, a sentimental parable that carefully recreates a post-war Japan obsessed with obliterating its past.

New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier

Even with no wood sprites, witches or spells, there’s plenty of magic in this coming-of-age charmer.

Slant Magazine

The story arc is somewhat facile, and its lesson about preserving history instead of demolishing it to make way for new, shiny things is too obvious.