Metacritic reviews

The movie looks like far more than a million dollars and it offers the kind of smart, picaresque good time you get from books like "The Reivers" and "Huckleberry Finn" and movies like "Bronco Billy" and "Bonnie and Clyde."

A heartfelt effort, if at times a bit heavy-handed.

Solidly old-fashioned entertainment.

A frequently mesmerizing if exceedingly strange coming-of-age odyssey.

The mix of rollicking, family-friendly action and backwoods mysticism is odd, as is the story's progress from larky escapades to increasingly grim consequences, and Craven never quite manages to make it all seem a smoothly integrated piece.

Jay Craven's stilted adaptation of a novel by Howard Frank Mosher lacks the urgency, the poetry, or the feeling for period that might have brought the material to life, while the cast seems to be largely squandered.

The movie, though lovingly handmade by Mr. Craven, has a frustratingly disjunctive rhythm.

The film is lovely to look at, but makes not a lick of sense.

It is a pretentious and incoherent blend of ghost story and frontier adventure that becomes more preposterous and idiotic with each passing scene.