Emotional investment is what makes any film work, and GOOD NIGHT OPPY’s main issue is that it’s too focused on accurately portraying the history of the project over bringing together the people who poured their lives into making it a success.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 21, 2023

A good movie to watch with older kids... especially ones with a math or science bent or who just like taking things apart to see how they work.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 30, 2022

Much of this floats on the score by Blake Neely, who gives us cues that lifts and directs us all the way through.

| Nov 30, 2022

It’s a wonderful film.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 22, 2022

A testament to dreaming, to cooperation, to pushing boundaries, and tapping into the vast potential of humanity.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 22, 2022

A wholly manipulative—and surprisingly shallow—portrait of human ingenuity and intergalactic exploration, as well as another case study of form getting in the way of content.

| Nov 8, 2022

The movie is practically a companion piece for the Matt Damon movie The Martian; they share a bright outlook, a problem solver’s delight at the labor of thinking through it all.

| Nov 7, 2022

The amazing story of the Mars Exploration Rover mission manages to feel emotionally like “E.T.” and look like “Star Wars.”

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 5, 2022

To get across the magnitude of what his subjects saw and did, White pours on the commercial filmmaking devices from start to finish, in the manner of fun-for-all-ages summer blockbusters that used to dominate the box office in the 1980s and '90s.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 4, 2022

Good Night Oppy restores us to a childlike state, so don’t be surprised if it turns a kid you know into a rocket obsessive, perhaps even a future space explorer.

| Nov 3, 2022

The rovers and what they did are famous. The MER staffers are not. Their dedication and commitment to the mission are inspiring.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 3, 2022

A warmly charming, if far from essential, documentary that takes a look back at the robotic Martian rover Opportunity.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 3, 2022

While descriptions of the aging robots as experiencing arthritis and memory loss are perhaps too cute, by the end of “Good Night Oppy,” Opportunity and Spirit have become no less lovable as characters than R2-D2 or Wall-E.

| Nov 3, 2022

This is a film engineered to unleash swells of connection and emotion, and part of that involves presenting the rovers as adorable and quirky 5ft 2in humans.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 3, 2022

Sometimes emotional, occasionally exciting, rarely informative.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 1, 2022

A salute to the best of what humans are capable when they unite in a common purpose to expand their knowledge of matters beyond the realm of the known.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 1, 2022

Ryan White’s documentary is cute to a fault and filled with a rapturously uncomplicated glee about the joys of exploration.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 31, 2022

[Oppy tells] a relatively familiar story in a straightforward way with admittedly great special effects and interview segments but also little to write about in terms of form.

| Sep 21, 2022

Here’s the cure for space flight apathy.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 20, 2022

The film may not be especially probing, but anyone awed by humanity’s ingenuity and technology’s potential to enrich our lives may end up with stars in their eyes.

| Sep 16, 2022