50
Like many narrative filmmakers who walk on their tippy-toes when dealing with the Holocaust, neither Daldry nor Hare seems eager to make the material his own.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
For those who think of cinema as dramatic roughage, The Reader should prove sufficiently indigestible.
60
The Reader can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. The Reader asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers.
60
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Provocatively intentioned, The Reader is a movie worth seeing - the kind of film you'll think about for days afterward. But when all is said and done, you're likely to wonder why the impact wasn't greater still.
75
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
The Reader is closer to a near miss than a rousing success but, on balance, this is still worth seeing for those who enjoy complexity and moral ambiguity within the context of a melodrama.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season.
63
Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust."
67
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
The film is notable for its nice performances, its handsome photography, and its very active music. If the preceding praise sounds generic, so is the movie.
60
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
The film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it's about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation.
50
Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.