Metacritic reviews

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet is the perfect 3D vehicle and Jeunet takes full advantage, offering a feast of amusing visual flourishes suited to the book’s playfulness.

T.S. Spivet is a dreamlike fairytale, which swims in the romanticism of childhood and the decay of the American Dream.

The film's greatest achievement is in the way the accomplished 3D treatment -- this is Jeunet’s first foray into the format -- emerges entirely naturally, as the precise expression of a gifted child’s vivid imagination.

While it doesn’t operate at its full potential, Spivet nonetheless offers a bracing risk: a kid adventure with danger alongside its whimsy and sadness alongside its reassurances.

Jeunet’s major achievement is to capture the book’s complicated museum clutter and hothouse-flower sensitivity.

For all it boasts in ingenious style, this genial American yarn lacks the delicious bile of Jenuet’s early days.

With more whimsy than a Wes Anderson wedding – and a clunky third act that potholes the plot – Jeunet’s American comeback is beautiful, heart-warming and a bit of a mess.

Jeunet occasionally reminds you why he was once considered one of the most exciting names in world cinema. But for the most part, it’s another visually interesting, somewhat hollow misfire.

Like one of its animated 3D asides, the film jumps out at you, twiddles around and then folds itself away into nowhere. It’s all pop-up, no book.

The two adjectives in the title should be replaced with "annoying" and "unendurably tiresome".