Every big dramatic moment is sapped of all its energy entirely.

| Jan 12, 2019

The film's indulgences are so heart-on-sleeve that it's hard to differentiate watching it from hearing someone pitch their very bad screenplay ideas with no attempt to read the room...

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 6, 2019

Despite the suffering ladled on to the characters, I remained stonily unmoved throughout.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 5, 2019

Confused, cliched and meandering to the point of incoherence. Everyone involved with this is capable of far better, but sadly this mess of a film cannot be redeemed by any of them.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 4, 2019

Wilde and Isaac are a chemistry-free coupling, which doesn't help, but Will and Abby are also fingers-down-the-blackboard awful.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 4, 2019

Half an hour in (if you're generous) and you'll realise you don't give a hoot about any of them. Avoid.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 3, 2019

It's quite a feat for a film to feel this dated upon initial release.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 3, 2019

Despite good moments and an ambition to reach for the profound, Life Itself settles for trite, sentimental and patience testing. A killer cast deserve better.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 3, 2019

The film continually draws attention to its own devices and tricks its audience.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 2, 2019

Fogelman takes on more than he can chew and hands to us the semi-masticated pulp, full of fatuous musings on Life's Meaning.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 2, 2019

The attempt by Life Itself to pretend it's anything other than another piece of "Nice men have feelings too, love us for being so nice!" propaganda is just exhausting.

| Oct 5, 2018

Fogelman's work is a little like listening to James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" while shopping for candles in a Pier One: It never stops to question its economic comfort, its upper-class value system, or its essential whiteness.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 24, 2018

Excruciatingly contrived and ill-conceived...

| Sep 24, 2018

Even in failure, it's clear that Fogelman has talent and can work with actors - it's just that his story is so unwieldy that it doesn't allow us to relate to his characters.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 21, 2018

Fogelman wants audiences to feel his love, but the only tools at his disposal are sap and cheese, which he hits viewers with like an errant bus driver.

| Original Score: D- | Sep 21, 2018

Relentlessly cruel, unbelievably cloying, unabashedly sentimental and frustratingly facile.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 21, 2018

It's a movie made for people who can't be trusted to understand any storytelling unless it's not just spoon-fed but ladled on, piled high, and explained via montage and voiceover.

| Original Score: D | Sep 21, 2018

There is about as much honesty and genuine emotion in this film as you would find in a damage-control ExxonMobil commercial.

| Sep 20, 2018

The less said about Life Itself -- a truly zany multi-timeline melodrama from the creator of that NBC show that makes everyone cry -- the better.

| Sep 20, 2018

In Life Itself, everyone's fate is in the hands of Fogelman, and he wields that power with terrible cruelty.

| Sep 20, 2018