Critic Reviews

As we learn, delightfully so, in Jeffrey Fox Jacobs' documentary A Sidewalk Astronomer, the Peking-born Dobson promotes the building and use of small, inexpensive telescopes to study the wonders of the sky.

Entertaining, painlessly educational documentary.

An inspiring film about an inspired teacher. It should leave all viewers with an ounce of curiosity eager to hit the streets with Dobsonian telescopes of their own.

A documentary that knows to sit back and listen as [Dobson] expounds on a variety of subjects.

Jacobs focuses almost exclusively on Dobson's theories and mission, which he illustrates by contrasting jaw-dropping images of the sun's surface with people ignoring Dobson's entreaties to "Come look at the sun."

An unenlightening recitation of lay science and salad bar spirituality that could only resonate with those audiences who last year actually flocked to a movie called "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"

An amateur in the best sense of the word, Dobson is an engaging ambassador for a life of the mind lived firmly in the real world.

Some of his theories seem cockamamie compared with current intellectual norms, though, so it's too bad the filmmakers don't give him time to make a coherent case.

An entirely unconventional, hypnotic, meandering film.