After watching Pippa Ehrlich's film, you may find it manipulative, lacking real depth, until it slowly starts to grow on you. It has a bit of magic in it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 4, 2023

“My Octopus Teacher” is a beautiful, moving, and reflective experience. It’s also a little crazy and doesn’t do much to hide its aggressive tugs on your heartstrings.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2022

While this approach leaves the human element of the film's story often feeling like a bit of an afterthought, it still manages to garner an emotional response through the intimacy and purity of its story.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 13, 2022

Foster’s approach avoids sentimentality and enhances both understanding and appreciation.

| May 3, 2022

It's not your average nature documentary, with its close focus on one subject and the relationship between octopus and filmmaker, and there's much to reflect on about humanity and nature by the time the credits roll.

| Feb 3, 2022

Sentimental and maudlin. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 4, 2021

Beautiful in imagery and concept if a little perfunctory in structure, My Octopus Teacher is one of those documentaries that scratches a lot of different itches.

| Sep 10, 2021

All the elements of the crowd pleaser and manipulative documentary evidently worked with the members of the Academy. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 22, 2021

Fair warning: Be prepared for an ending that's as likely to make you tear up as the end of Charlotte's Web. Some octopus!

| Jun 14, 2021

Along the way, cameras capture moments of life-and-death drama and tenderness, which Foster finds is helping him gain perspective on his own issues.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 12, 2021

Must we view an octopus as a friend, a saviour, a teacher? Couldn't we simply settle for not eating them?

| May 12, 2021

This otherwise gorgeous nature documentary is marred by the banal self-therapy of its human protagonist... and he is nowhere near as interesting as the manic pixie dream octopus who changes his life.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 9, 2021

The footage is magnificent, and over the entire running time, I never grew tired of it.

| May 4, 2021

[A] beautiful documentary. [Full review in Spanish]

| May 3, 2021

This exotic, exquisite Oscar-winning documentary is captivating.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 26, 2021

Magical. Makes you wonder whether there isn't something to the Buddhist concept that many animals are really incarnated human spirits who got shunted down a few levels due to an overabundance of karma. This octopus will be your teacher too.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2021

You'll laugh and cry your eyes out as an emotionally bruised diver learns about life and loyalty from an eight-tentacled mollusk. This Oscar favorite and viral sensation is the year's most unorthodox and unforgettable love story.

| Apr 23, 2021

A documentary that somehow captures lightning in a bottle by being both an extraordinary record of the untapped wonders of nature as well expanding the limits of the already tapped human condition.

| Apr 22, 2021

An octopus may have three hearts to confront life's challenges, but a single human heart would have to be very cold indeed not to be charmed by this unconventional spin on buddy-movie tropes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2021

A distinctive and memorable tale of how a filmmaker formed an unusual friendship with an octopus that taught him more about life than he expected. It's a movie that's unabashedly sentimental but also thoroughly entertaining and educational.

| Apr 21, 2021