Metacritic reviews

Rarely does a movie make you feel so warm and so uneasy at the same time.

As stirring as it is slight, as effective as it is familiar.

Don't underestimate the appeal of a heart-tugger that's this well mounted.

Hicks doesn't always keep the story clear and compelling, but Hopkins is in top form.

Too poky and contrived to be a good movie, but its lushly serene atmospherics, given current events, make it a pure slice of sentimental comfort food.

The few who saw the embalmed adaptation of "Snow Falling on Cedars" will recognize the same stifling approach brought to this more accessible material by director Scott Hicks.

The resulting film directed by Scott Hicks is afflicted by terminal nostalgic drift. You come out of the theater with nothing more specific than half-pleasant memories of baseball gloves, Ferris wheels and vintage automobiles. I've had naps that were more exciting.

Unabashedly sentimental, it's meant to touch our hearts in profound and important ways, but misses the mark by drawing too deeply from a pool of schmaltz.

What's missing, really, is a point. Like "Snow Falling on Cedars," Hicks composes every shot in Hearts in Atlantis as if it were his last.

It's not hell, but limbo, junior high-school style.