[Sherman] Alexie’s screenplay is full of modest but vivid details and first-time director Eyre has an almost effortless touch in getting them on the screen with an easy mosaic-like mix of snapshots of life on the Rez and on the road mixed.

| Apr 26, 2025

Hollywood’s first Native American feature is this charming perspective-reorienting dramedy.

| Mar 17, 2024

It’s the first feature film for director Chris Eyre, and his young leads are relative newcomers to the big screen, but their energy and the freshness of their point of view overcome any rough spots.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 8, 2023

Smoke Signals is a road movie with an acid sense of humor and a heritage-ridden theme that’s as universal as it is specific.

| Original Score: B | Nov 8, 2023

Eyre and Alexie also open doors yo the reservation, exposing the tragedies as well as the whimsy, and gleefully skewering every cliché about Native Americans that Hollywood has ever perpetrated.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 8, 2023

The handsome Beach and the very amusing Adams anchor an ensemble of terrific actors, including Tantoo Cardinal as Victor's spirt-weary mother, Farmer as the troubled, guilt-ridden Arnold Joseph, and Irene Bedard as Suzy Song.

| Nov 8, 2023

Smoke Signals may be the most delightfully quirky surprise of the summer, a shaggy-dog tale that from its opening moments... portrays the Native American legacy of pride and pain with deep emotion, grace and irreverence.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2023

Only after you've sat with it for a while does the greater, universal message of true self-love take form. Fortunately, the delayed impact takes nothing away from the movie's upfront entertainment value.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 8, 2023

It is a warm film of friendship and reconciliation, and whenever it refers to historic injustices or contemporary issues in Native American culture, it does so with wry, glancing humor. Smoke Signals is indeed poignant, but above all it's pretty funny.

| Nov 8, 2023

Smoke Signals is a picaresque adventure that I found altogether satisfying and truly delicious. It's not a frivolous film, but it is a grandly entertaining movie, a motion picture that looks you right in the eye -- and winks.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 8, 2023

This is another road movie, but in an entirely different direction. Each episode that develops deepens the story and our understanding of the people in it... Eyre provides us with an indigenous Our Town that leaves a moviegoer feeling sorry when it ends.

| Original Score: A | Nov 8, 2023

I can't think of a recent movie that packs more provocative fun into less than ninety minutes.

| Nov 8, 2023

You couldn't ask for a more soulful, enjoyable enlightenment than this beautiful film provides.

| Nov 8, 2023

A light, entertaining treatment of serious themes that speaks with a distinctive, unusual voice and instinctively pulls back from the temptation to be solemn and pretentious.

Full Review | Nov 8, 2023

The plot is episodic, hardly surprising in light of its origin as a series of short stories. But the performances are convincing, with Beach and Adams making a credible odd couple.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 8, 2023

Smoke Signals celebrates the power of storytelling and the way that existing within a tradition -- even just the tradition of the story form itself -- verifies our existence.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2023

In its quiet, personalized, intimately scaled way, it's a landmark -- the first film to be written, directed, and coproduced by Native Americans. But then part of its charm is that it would make fun of the "landmark" label.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 8, 2023

That [Smoke Signals] was made entirely by American Indians... is remarkable, but by no means the film's greatest achievement. What's truly remarkable about Smoke Signals is the depth of the narrative, a touching tale of self-discovery.

| Nov 8, 2023

Arnold can be a bully. But Farmer never lets him be just a bully, a tyrant chieftain of the absolute. He also shows us a man wracked by self-hatred, guilt and yet desperately full of love. It's a great performance.

| Nov 8, 2023

It's exciting when a motion picture that breaks a cultural barrier also turns out to be an entertaining movie. That's what happens with Smoke Signals, a funny, gently haunting road picture.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 8, 2023