Critic Reviews

So moving, so memorable, so magically produced, it's going to delight millions of movie fans and sweep the Oscars.

Above all a cracking good yarn that earns its laughter, its wonder and its tears.

As Darabont directs it, it tells a story with beginning, middle, end, vivid characters, humor, outrage and emotional release. Dickensian.

A reminder of just how good Hollywood storytelling can be.

Darabont follows King's book fairly closely, allowing the audience to steep itself in the setting and characters slowly, like reading a good novel.

A touching (and at times horrific) -- albeit overlong -- Christ allegory, that scores not so much on the strength of its convictions as it does on the truly remarkable performances it elicits from the cast.

There's almost too much there, but the three-hour-plus film permits the kind of detailing that not only brings the storytelling to life, but sometimes persuades us we're breathing to its rhythms.

An often pedestrian film, one that never inflates to the epic grandeur to which it aspires or transfers its own emotional trajectory off the screen and into the viewer.

Excessive, but I, like Mr. Jingles, can't resist the Christmas-season cheese.

A very engrossing movie, the kind that gives shameless manipulation a good name.