Sweet Thing is creatively shot and bursting with energy, but Rockwell’s biggest ambition is seemingly to replicate a bunch of ideas from other films, to put visuals to his favorite songs and to showcase his talented family.

| Sep 23, 2023

It's rare for a film dealing with such subjects to fall on the side of optimism, naively misty-eyed or not.

| Original Score: 3 | Nov 17, 2021

Even though it paints a bruising picture of dysfunctional family life, Sweet Thing charms with its touching message about childhood resilience.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 14, 2021

It's an attractive, engaging work with excellent performances, but it makes things a bit too easy for itself in its vision of the world.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 12, 2021

[A] fairytale-like coming-of-age story...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 10, 2021

Takes a number of familiar elements and makes something rather special.

| Sep 9, 2021

Despite the tender performances, there isn't enough to fully invest in this coming-of-age drama.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 8, 2021

This small, delicate, late-blooming film is quite lovely, and a throwback to the 1990s/2000s craze for semi-improvised, rough and ready indie film-making.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 7, 2021

Sweet Thing is in black and white, but the movie aptly shows how problems of abuse, parental neglect, and family dysfunction are experienced in life's shades of gray ... The children are really the heart and soul of the movie.

| Jul 21, 2021

The film shows how the power of the dreams, and fantasy can help overcome the worst situations in life [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 18, 2021

Sweet Thing might look like a fragile thing, an independent film ready to be crushed by a studio juggernaut. Those films are often the strongest, the kinds that stick around long after a blockbuster has faded from memory.

| Jun 29, 2021

Rockwell doesn't sugarcoat the hard-knock lives of impoverished children, but he also captures the wonder and imagination of childhood as deftly as any filmmaker.

| Jun 25, 2021

...if this one doesn't make a star of [Rockwell's] eldest, Lana, the right people aren't paying attention.

| Original Score: B | Jun 22, 2021

"Sweet Thing" is a small movie with big ideas, and a captivating timelessness that feels almost like Peter Pan running through a junkyard with Charlie Chaplin and Charles Bukowski.

| Jun 22, 2021

The connection between the two children was really strong, moving, and rang true.

| Jun 22, 2021

Overflowing with nostalgia and sentimentality, Sweet Thing shines because the relationships are real.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 19, 2021

Sweet Things often tests the boundaries that separate pastiche from homage from straight up derivation but it's shot through with an honesty and clarity of purpose that keep it on its own grounds.

| Jun 18, 2021

A soulful, uplifting, but also heartbreaking look at race and poverty's impact on troubled childhood.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 18, 2021

Not since The Florida Project have I felt this emotional about a story of children forced to grow up way too fast.

| Original Score: 8.5/10 | Jun 18, 2021

What makes this simple story special is the style that the writer and director Alexandre Rockwell brings to the screen.

| Jun 17, 2021