Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2011

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

By far the most powerful element is N'Dour's lone voice, a thing of high, pure beauty that feels at once ancient and new. When he sings, an otherwise earnestly conventional film becomes a vehicle of incantatory power.

| Oct 16, 2009

Inspirational concert film.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 6, 2009

This documentary by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi could have used more music for my taste, and fewer talking heads. But it's absorbing all the same. N'Dour is the sort of humanitarian bridge that we need in a world so sharply divided.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 27, 2009

Be sure to stay through the closing credits as the scenes of Senegalese life act as a captivating coda to a film pulsing with music and memory.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2009

Youssou N'Dour is a beautiful film to watch as it unfolds the life of N'Dour and, by extension, the lives of millions of West Africans who are anonymous to many in the West.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 31, 2009

When the music starts playing, it's easy to forgive the film's flaws.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 17, 2009

N'Dour is the film's unstoppable force, handsome and radiating joy. He's the kind of performer who is larger than life but always seems like one of the family.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 16, 2009

An inspiring and edifying cinematic exploration of the power of music and the soul of a big-hearted African Sufi singer who has used his exceptional talent and creativity to make a better world.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 4, 2009

Although his movie often resembles the kind of promotional video one might find as an extra on a concert DVD, N'Dour in full throttle is a sight, and sound, to behold.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 3, 2009

Love looks and sounds great, but in depicting N'Dour as a lofty symbol for music's power to bridge worlds and inspire, it sometimes loses sight of the man.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 25, 2009

While the rambling, repetitive look at his life off stage is unevenly edited, his music is gloriously heard and seamlessly presented to an appreciative global audience.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 19, 2009

Documentary about a great world-music performer is colorful but also suffers from a certain blandness and repetitiveness. A pure concert movie with biographical interruptions would have been preferable.

| Jun 17, 2009

A lively, soulful documentary that lacks sufficient insight into the life of Youssou N'Dour.

| Original Score: 6.0/10 | Jun 15, 2009

[Director] Vasarhelyi offers only generalities on the Egypt dispute and never really tells us about N'Dour the man.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 12, 2009

The director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, is in thrall to her subject, and dewy-eyed accounts of pop stars, even those with as compelling a biography as Mr. N'Dour, tend to wear out their welcome.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 12, 2009

Fans and newcomers to N'dour's music will be equally enthralled by the finely observed, patiently wrought documentary.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 12, 2009

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 12, 2009

Though we see the same man throughout the bumpy tour captured here -- always calm, steady, faithful -- it's bound to prove an enlightening portrait for those who know him only as the guy who once worked with Peter Gabriel.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 11, 2009