The fulcrum of the film is Martin. It's an adventurous and successful stroke of casting that takes advantage of what the audience expects from him.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 31, 2013

This movie has its share of laughs, but it's also Ron Howard's most personal film, and clearly his most ambitious.

Full Review | Jul 31, 2013

Parenthood easily could have focused exclusively on yuppie parents and their kids; however, the script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel is more sophisticated than that, remembering that every parent is still a child too.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 31, 2013

The remaining cast, young, old and in-between, is lovely.

| Jul 31, 2013

With Parenthood, Howard as a director has discovered weight, but not gravity. For all of its admirable seriousness, the film finally floats away.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 31, 2013

There's not a scene in Parenthood that isn't involving: The actors keep reaching into themselves and coming up with gold.

| Jul 31, 2013

There is something brave and original about piling up most of our worst parental nightmares in one movie and then daring to make a midsummer comedy out of them. It really shouldn't work, but it does.

| Feb 2, 2009

An ambitious, keenly observed, and often very funny look at one of life's most daunting passages...

| Feb 2, 2009

Parenthood is a middlebrow masterpiece. Not a masterpiece of middlebrow but a middlebrow masterpiece, with the latter word being the subject, not the modifier.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 29, 2007

Steve Martin's manically over-conscientious dad steals the film, whether chewing the pitch as his small son fumbles at baseball, or entertaining a kids' party as an unconvincing cowboy.

| Jun 24, 2006

Even being the most sensitive parent, the film reminds us, has its limits. No matter how hard you try, you can't live your children's lives for them.

Full Review | May 20, 2003

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

It's a shock, and a welcome one, to see Steve Martin cast against type as a doting dad. Martin's nippy wit continually lifts this movie above the swamp of sentiment.

Full Review | May 12, 2001

Director Ron Howard combines this multi-generational suburban soap almost effortlessly, considering the number of parents or would be parents we're expected to care about.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 17, 2001

It's the best kind of comedy, where we recognize the truth of what's happening even while we're smiling, and where we eventually acknowledge that there is a truth in comedy that serious drama never can quite reach.

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

A veritable diaper bag of laughs, it serves best as a sensitive guy's guide to fatherhood.

| Jan 1, 2000

Punchy entertainment for the open-minded family, the kind that realizes Home Sweet Home is -- well, an interesting idea.

| Jan 1, 2000