Critic Reviews

Brutally patient and triumphant in its love for its characters, it captures reality with painstaking clarity while reimagining a better world.

There isn’t a predictable or hackneyed exchange in the drama, which understands not just the immense challenges its characters face but also the throwaway humor that can be essential to a family’s connective tissue.

This is not an autobiography. Take Me Home is instead a deeply felt examination of the challenges so many face when familial love is swamped by economic reality. The director puts a lot on her characters’ shoulders to illustrate how unsupported and isolated illness and disability can be.

The film is at its best in moments of warmth, humor, and kindness—that is where it really shines, without needing to amp up the stakes or shift forms.

A sensitive drama that marks a notably personal feature debut.

Sargent shows talent at constructing a down-to-Earth, largely observational character study that admirably doesn’t lean too hard on inspirational pathos or turgid trauma porn to generate drama or emotion. It makes for a very promising first feature, one that unfortunately undercuts itself with an underwhelming, emotionally vapid fantasy of a conclusion.

Its approach is so diffuse that its uncertain and purposefully ambiguous ending is misguided at best.