Patti Cake$ is the outsiders' plea for acceptance, even when those taste makers are deaf to the notes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 27, 2018

[Patti Cake$] is a strangely old-fashioned heartwarmer about talent contests and "putting up flyers".

| Sep 21, 2017

[Danielle McDonald] carries the movie, and that's no small feat for a newcomer. I'm sure we'll be hearing a great deal more from her.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 15, 2017

At the centre of it all, trying to hold herself together against the slings and arrows, Patti becomes kind of heroic.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 13, 2017

The spirit of a whiter, rockier music hangs over Geremy Jasper's gimcrack hip-hop epic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 6, 2017

This is what feelgood cinema looks like and it's plus-size, trashy and full of attitude.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2017

Jasper's point is that being oneself is always a performance. If we know how to tell a story we all have the right to get up on stage.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2017

Yes, it features a stand-out, possibly even award-worthy, central turn from the newcomer Danielle Macdonald, but the film's most notable feature is its descent from gritty set-up into cringeworthy cliché.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 31, 2017

Unashamedly entertaining, and particularly unashamed of using every old trick in the book to get there.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 31, 2017

A rough-edged charmer that puts its own stamp on the underdog story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 31, 2017

She's a screwball amalgam of Ricki Lake and Honey G; with a last-reel hair makeover verging on the Adele.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 31, 2017

A story we've seen told a hundred times before feels fresh thanks to Danielle Macdonald's brilliant performance, handling both the drama and the rapping in style.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 31, 2017

Plot wise, Patti Cake$ is straight from the Rocky or Cinderella playbook. The more that Patti is knocked back, the more inevitable it is that her talent will finally shine through.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 30, 2017

A beautiful story that plays out like a Bruce Springsteen song.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 30, 2017

Macdonald is a phenomenal presence. Her Patti, a turbulent swirl of vulnerability and resilience, anchors the film when it threatens to get too flighty.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2017

It has some emotional resonance and its fair share of laughs. But it's a story we've seen a million times before, and that seems like the one quality a big-sale indie film shouldn't boast.

| Aug 26, 2017

The performances are all first-rate - particularly Bridget Everett as Macdonald's haggard mother - but first time writer-director Geremy Jasper makes more bad choices than his misguided characters here.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 25, 2017

This is a real story, one with real heart, real emotion, all of it centered around a main character whose faults and shortcomings are every bit as fascinating as her strengths and attributes prove to be.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 25, 2017

Patti Cake$ for the most part avoids feeling like a song you've heard before. It's too big-hearted and genuine not to love.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 25, 2017

Take "8 Mile" and cross it with "Hustle & Flow" and add a little bit of "Precious" and you have "Patti Cake$," a hip-hop underdog story about finding the rhythm by following your own beat.

| Original Score: B- | Aug 25, 2017