It's filled with strong, relevant messages while still being fun and watchable.

| Original Score: A | Aug 19, 2024

When you combine The Public’s penchant for cheap sentiment and its social advocacy message, you get the equivalent of cinematic social conscience fluffernutter that is spread too thin.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 18, 2022

Emilio Estevez tackles blinkered bureaucrats in this high-minded social advocacy drama.

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

Somewhat light-hearted in its tone, The Publicis clearly a labor of love for its extraordinary cast.

| Feb 10, 2021

A timely social drama.

| Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Nov 14, 2020

Estevez has assembled a quality ensemble cast here, though one can't help but feel like he's given them B-grade material to work with.

| Original Score: 2.0/4.0 | Sep 20, 2020

It's heart is in the right place in many ways, but it just outlines everything so clearly in red marker that it doesn't let you discovers things for yourself. Still, it's an estimable effort in some ways.

| Sep 15, 2020

With the tender influence of writer-director-star Emilio Estevez on both sides of the camera, it emerges as something warm, smart and shamelessly uplifting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2020

That everything ends on a weird happy-clappy high is indicative of a scattershot project that could have done with less ambition, more focus.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 24, 2020

A mix of eloquence and satire, in this homeless mass uprising takeover of one of the last remaining US sanctuaries for bookworms and the homeless alike, the public library.

| Feb 21, 2020

The Public presents a heartening story of triumph of good over evil, but sadly lacks the gravitas one would usually expect from these types of stories.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 21, 2020

Credit to Estevez for making this but it's quite thin, offers no real solutions and has tired characterisations.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 19, 2020

It's all a bit old-fashioned and earnest but with US civil liberties under attack, it's a timely celebration of humanity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 19, 2020

It is a film with its heart in the right place, but the dialogue and characterisation are both plonkingly unconvincing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 19, 2020

At times feels a worthy successor to the social issue dramas that were a trademark of Stanley Kramer in the civil rights era.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 17, 2020

The canvas is broad, with lots of supporting characters and subplots, and while the writing is heavy-handed at times in the Golden Age of Television style, Estevez imbues the movie with a large and generous heart.

| Jan 7, 2020

Yes, it's earnest and it tries a little too hard, but it sucked me in.

| Sep 27, 2019

There is something decidedly old-fashioned about the storytelling in The Public, but maybe there's truth to the idea that we need to understand and appreciate the past if we're ever going to be able to move forward together.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 11, 2019

Written, directed by and starring Emilio Estevez, The Public is a pleasantly old-fashioned crowd-pleaser, which argues that libraries are the last great bastion of modern democracy, since they provide free access to knowledge, community and shelter.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 9, 2019

It's a beautifully shot and directed film that openly wears its heart on its sleeve as an ode to one of the last surviving bastions of free information and public space - the public library.

| Aug 16, 2019