Critic Reviews

Each sequence is masterfully calibrated for maximum lip-quivering effect, swelling strings and all.

Everything is lathered with a syrupy, string-laden musical score designed to gnaw at a viewer's tear ducts. It's about as subtle as having an off-screen narrator yell "Start crying!" before big scenes, and probably as effective.

Little more than an archipelago of historical set pieces linked by a syrupy causeway of sentiment, JK Youn’s Ode to My Father may have slain them in South Korea, but its packaged pain and bullet-point structure are likely to leave Western audiences cold.