It's refreshing seeing a film so sensitive, sincere, and devoid of all sensationalism. [Full review in Spanish]

| Dec 30, 2022

Although The Man in the Moon is frequently sad to the point of pain, it ends with a quietly optimistic poignancy. This is due partly to the film’s performances

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 24, 2022

The screenplay is so strong at developing relationships that it's easy to forgive the heavy-handed developments that occasionally knock the film off its track (including a ferocious storm that suggests Dorothy and Miss Gulch might soon be making cameos).

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 16, 2021

Few filmmakers have captured the American south quite like Mulligan, and The Man in the Moon is his graceful, deeply moving farewell.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 4, 2019

Newcomer Witherspoon manages to strike exactly the right note as the tomboy on the verge of womanhood while Waterston works on several levels at once.

| Mar 26, 2009

The heart-warming tone steadily becomes overheated.

| Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 30, 2005

Mulligan uses a delicate touch in revealing the confusion in growing up and the loss in discovering that the world isn't as simple or perfect as children believe it to be.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 31, 2005

Beautifully filmed, with Mulligan's special gifts for depicting country life and the South.

| Jan 24, 2005

Gets an outstandingly natural performance out of Miss Witherspoon, who has no trouble carrying a lot of the film single-handedly. It falls to her to remind the audience that this story is at heart about a family, and she does.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 30, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 28, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 2, 2004

Tender and touching film about two sisters whose close relationship is tested by the joy of love and the pain of grief.

| Jul 15, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 22, 2002

"a drama that lingers on in the memory"

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 29, 2002

"The Man in the Moon" is a wonderful movie, but it is more than that, it is a victory of tone and mood. It is like a poem.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

"The Man in the Moon" is an intimate, sentimental coming-of-age drama, a sweet little puppy love movie crushed by the enormity of its tragic twists.

| Jan 1, 2000

This cast is a knock-out. As the parents, veterans Sam Waterston, Tess Harper and Gail Strickland lead these novice teen actors in setting standards that these young performers will spend the rest of their careers trying to emulate.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Robert Mulligan directs this story with all the sensitivity he can muster. And sensitivity is certainly what the plot needs, since it is perilously close to being a trashy Southern passions sort of melodrama.

| Original Score: low +1 out of -4..+4 | Jan 1, 2000