Whatever leaps of logic yawn in the film's poorly cobbled-together arguments are papered over by its wash of button-pushing images, from regimented soldiers and deadly explosions to flocks of wild geese and sunbeams breaking through the clouds.

| Dec 13, 2011

I Am is looking for a little bit of hope in this world. Happily, it finds some. A great deal actually.

| Apr 29, 2011

An open heart can be a recipe for ridicule, particularly in a culture where consumption is mistaken for a moral imperative.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 29, 2011

Happily, the frisky Shadyac does not sermonize. He is a puckish Sherpa to the frontiers of science and faith.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 28, 2011

It's hard to decide what rankles most: what an astonishing monument to Shadyac's self-absorption I Am is, or how flat-out bad -- incompetent, even -- the filmmaking is.

| Original Score: 0.5/5 | Apr 22, 2011

A well-intentioned documentary that is just too unfocused, scattered, and philosophically thin to matter.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 22, 2011

I'm not an ideal viewer for a documentary like "I Am," which involves the ingestion of Woo Woo in industrial bulk. When I see a man whose mind is being read by yogurt, I expect to find that man in a comedy starring, oh, someone like Jim Carrey.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 21, 2011

A film about this problem should have some larger point to make, some narrative to construct, something personal to tell us. This film has only whiffs of each.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 31, 2011

Shadyac, energized by the thrill of engaging on big questions with great minds, has created an earnest if often incoherent patchwork on life's purpose and meaning.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 25, 2011

There are great filmmakers - Chris Marker and Nanni Moretti come to mind - whose cinematic essays render their first-person musings utterly compelling. Shadyac is not in their league.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 25, 2011

We're left wondering how Desmond Tutu wound up in this vanity project in the first place.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 18, 2011

It's not just that Mr. Shadyac makes big leaps and sometimes papers over contradictions. It's also that after a while everyone starts to sound the same: a little beatific, a little high on wonder, a little platitudinous.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 18, 2011

In a heartfelt cinematic essay, Hollywood director Tom Shadyac declares "I Am" the source of humanity's problems. Considering he made "Patch Adams," I agree.

| Original Score: 0.5/4 | Mar 18, 2011

An optimistic exploration of what's right and wrong with the world.

| Mar 11, 2011

What lifts the film above its dubious boilerplate assemblage of talking heads and archival images is Shadyac himself.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 10, 2011

What's wrong with the world? How do we go about fixing it? Is the fundamental nature of man essentially benevolent or cruel? These are all questions for either society's most profound philosophers, or the man who directed Ace Ventura.

| Original Score: C- | Mar 10, 2011

An earnest, lumpy macramé of a personal nonfiction project...

| Original Score: C | Mar 9, 2011

Whatever case the subjects make for a more benevolent view of human nature, it's hard to avoid taking an oppositional stance to their testimony when it's being so relentlessly shoved down our throats.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 5, 2011

Shadyac should be applauded for his quest. Whether the result amounts to anything is less clear.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 3, 2011

Here's a rare feel-good documentary that earns its somewhat cockeyed optimism.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 24, 2011