Critic Reviews
72
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
13(72%)
mixed
5(28%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 18 Critic Reviews
100
Take a funny, touching, complex play that moves at a breakneck pace, filter it through the huge (if often underrated) talents of director Fred Schepisi, and you've got Six Degrees of Separation. Such a rare gift - a film that treats language with infinite respect and ideas with cultivated precision, a film that challenges us to keep up and rewards our efforts with a bittersweet comedy of manners. [24 Dec 1993]
88
It's got sharp wit and a wise heart, and as good as it was onstage, it's even better as a movie. [22 Dec 1993, p.33]
88
A resonant moral conundrum tripling as a wry social satire and an armchair mystery, Six Degrees of Separation has been transferred to the screen with intelligence and panache, if some initial disorientation in the jumpy opening sequences. [22 Dec 1993, p.E3]
88
Six Degrees is the next best thing to a great play; a fantastically clever, verbally scintillating, consistently amusing one.
80
Despite some fuzzy thinking in the third act, when it gets hard to see what is on Guare's mind, the result is a thoroughly engaging and pointed film.
80
Six Degrees is magical when addressing the preposterous. Like any good storyteller, Paul is deft at knitting eyes with wool. Smith proves himself an extremely charismatic presence, convincing in his sincerity and cunning in conveying his ability as a human sponge.
75
Guare's play is austerely funny and cerebral, and the film stays true to it, neither warming it up nor dumbing it down. [22 Dec 1993, p.E1]
75
Combined with Guare's bountiful writing and Schepisi's ambitious style, Six Degrees of Separation approaches the sublime. [21 Jan 1994, p.G5]
75
Schepisi, with his camera always moving, has the knack of keeping the viewer as slightly off balance as Guare's story does, and the result is a fascinating motion picture. [21 Jan 1994, p.3F]
70
Mr. Schepisi's directorial vigor wins out over his film's skittishness. This version may horrify purists, but it winds up working entertainingly on its own broader, flashier terms.
