Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
All good protagonists are contradictory tangles of experience and disappointment, but Cody is so tentative in her approach, nothing gathers steam or sticks in emotional terms.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
If only Demme had shot a scene of Ricki stubbing out a joint on a "Cathy" comic strip.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Demme has already made a messed-up family matrimonial get-together way better than this, with a way better screenplay than the one Juno writer Cody has tossed off.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Even with its well-observed moments, the movie's nonmusical interactions, whether reaching for laughs or poignancy, too often feel flat and forced.

Name : Tina Hassannia / Alias : Globe and Mail
Regardless of its flimsy emotional interior, Ricki is a worthy addition in this year's growing canon of strong female-centred films, and it would be wise to remember Streep's stunning performance come awards season.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Ricki and the Flash" feels like "Stella Dallas" as remade by Jean Renoir - it's a humanist suburban fable.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The movie is mature in the way it handles the regrets of absentee parents and the ways in which their children relate to them. There's a little Hollywood artifice here but not so much that the emotions feel inauthentic.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Streep's performance, like lightning, jolts everything.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Quite a few filmgoers lament the shortage of movies for adults. "Ricki and the Flash" goes against that trend with rock 'n' roll attitude.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Director Jonathan Demme, with music in his DNA, offers a heartfelt salute to those who play the underside of rock & roll because, well, they have to. Too bad the rest of the movie is dime-a-dozen family soap opera.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
A warmth radiates through Ricki and the Flash like a song sung true. A film that adores its characters this much is sure to be adored in kind.

Name : Spencer Kornhaber / Alias : The Atlantic
Just when the story beats start to feel unbearably obvious, the film changes keys, becoming less family dramedy than a concert film.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"Ricki and the Flash" seems like a squandered opportunity for this humane, curious and liberal-minded filmmaker to reflect on some uncomfortable realities. This isn't really rock 'n' roll. It's easy listening.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Streep finds her way to the soul of several songs. There's devastating connection and tears in these moments: delicate gratitude in "Drift Away," nothing short of maternal redemption in a roaring version of Springsteen's "My Love Will Not Let You Down."

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
The story here, like a lot of bar bands, goes loud to cover up mediocrity. When Streep sings, though, so does the film.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Ricki and the Flash swerves near stereotypes and swerves away at every turn.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
This is a shaggy, easily distractible film that consistently defies expectations to both charming and baffling effect.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Creating a film with solid drama beside good humor is tough. It's harder still to balance them against a complicated character so they don't sprawl lopsided, and to send the audience home feeling satisfied.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
It's a crowd-pleaser every bit as calculated and earnestly defanged as a Golden Oldies bus-and-truck tour. It's fun while it lasts, even if the Bic lighters stay safely pocketed at the end of the show.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
An assemblage of almost-characters in an almost-story, resulting in a very disappointing almost-movie.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
If only Streep would have put down the microphone and let Springfield sing "Jessie's Girl," "Ricki and the Flash" might have had half a chance.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ricki raises smart questions about why a mother's musical ambitions are so much more selfish than, say, seven-time dad Mick Jagger's, and even the shamelessly corny sing-along finale wrings a few real tears out.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Despite Streep's best efforts, Ricki seems more of a contrivance than a flesh-and-blood character.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The result is cold porridge.

Name : Susanna Schrobsdorff / Alias : TIME Magazine
Streep's latest mom role, as Ricki Rendazzo in Ricki and the Flash, has a light, Mamma Mia! vibe, but it still hits all those hot buttons.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
As in Demme's best early work (Handle With Care, Melvin & Howard), there is both an affection for a uniquely American type of oddball and a clear-eyed sense of their foibles.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
The movie itself seems equally divided between the sensibilities of hyperverbal writer Diablo Cody and music-centric director Jonathan Demme, and ends up falling into a muddy gap between the two.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
The film roars to life too intermittently.but, sadly, too much of Ricki and the Flash is just the same old song.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The screenplay doesn't lack for memorable zingers, and thanks to Cody's script and Streep's performance, Ricki emerges as a complex, self-contradictory person (even if most of the supporting characters don't).

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
There are fleeting moments of real fun. Still, it's hard not to wonder why so much in the movie went so wrong.

Name : Patrick Dunn / Alias : Detroit News
Streep may have just been looking for some variety and an Oscar. But why is Demme, the great director of "The Silence of the Lambs," wasting his time on this?

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
While there are some bright notes in Cody's writing, the situations feel a little tired, and the characters unexplored.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Streep and Springfield make a surprisingly sweet pair of retirement-age rockers, but the scattered story line keeps losing the beat.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Worth watching, and rocking to.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
What might have been must be better than what's here, because what's here isn't much.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Diablo Cody's dispiriting screenplay is all about everyone coming to love Ricki, faults and all, and that is just not convincingly done.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film, which Diablo Cody wrote and Jonathan Demme directed, is a work of bulk-size bogusness. Barely a single scene is convincing.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Ultimately, spending time with these people is pleasant, lived-in, honest and even thought-provoking. And when the dialogue stops, there's a fun, golden not-too-oldies live music soundtrack to hum along with too.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The skilled veteran Demme alternates dysfunctional family confrontations with easy comedy, expertly peppering in just the right rock tunes along the way. It's hard not to like Ricki, but the film makes no excuses for her actions.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The development probably works in Glendon Swarthout's novel of the same name, where Swank is nowhere in sight. But not in the theater. You're tempted to give up on the movie because it feels as if the movie has given up on her.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Few will regret having seen "The Homesman," and yet it's not exactly an enjoyable experience.

Name : Jon Frosch / Alias : The Atlantic
Jones continues to craft evocative, painterly images, and he takes real risks with tone, shifting from tragic to comic without the usual cues or transitions.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
A film that looks at first glance like a conventional Western but goes to unusual places.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : Time Out New York
It doesn't help that Swank never finds a way into this highly unappealing character, or that Jones (mostly phoning in the pitiable surliness) avoids delving very deeply into the story's proto-feminist undercurrents.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
Some recent interviews with Jones paint him as a bit of a curmudgeon. But he's right to push back against being put into a box. "The Homesman" succeeds mainly because it and he don't neatly fit into one.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
If only things had started out on more solid ground and headed toward some sort of resolution. If only.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
The melancholic balance isn't always quite right and the momentum wanes when it should be gaining.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
A strange, and beautiful movie, full of odd touches - a knife fight in the middle of a desolate wasteland, a gravestone made from a bed's headboard, a piece of embroidery that stands in for a much-missed keyboard - that haunt after the film's done.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
For a movie headlined by two Oscar-winning Hollywood stars - and directed and co-written by one of them - "The Homesman" is awfully close to outsider art.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
A wrenching, relentless and anti-heroic western that stands among the year's most powerful American films. Not everyone will like "The Homesman," but if you see it you won't soon forget it.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"The Homesman" is both a captivating western and a meticulous, devastating feminist critique of the genre.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Unlike other actor-directors, Jones never seems to indulge excess on the part of his cast. Though the characters are strong, the performances are understated.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Swank, an Oscar winner for "Boys Don't Cry" and "Million Dollar Baby," is outstanding, getting to the essence of Mary Bee's pride and pain. And in the showier role, Jones impressively peels away layers of rambunctiousness to reveal George's humanity.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Everyone has a favorite Tommy Lee Jones performance. Until now I didn't have my least favorite, but "The Homesman" provides it, and is ruined by it.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The Homesman aims for a story that's poignant and told sparely, but comes across as mawkish, tedious and self-indulgent.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : Film.com
If this is a revision to the revisionist westerns ushered in by "Unforgiven," I'll stay back East(wood.)

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Integrity and personality can go a long way, especially in a movie as unquestionably flawed as The Homesman.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
At a certain point, The Homesman will take you by surprise. By the end . it will take your heart.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
Wanders along the lonesome trail, then heads off into the underbrush.

Name : Pete Vonder Haar / Alias : Village Voice
Glendon Swarthout's 1988 novel offered a rare approach to . Old West stories by shifting the focus to the women and children who often bore its brunt the worst, and Jones has - for the most part - successfully captured this .

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : NPR
The Homesman joins a stark, stripped-down beauty to a languid pace and a spare soundtrack to create an ambience that reeks of loneliness and alienation.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This fem-centric Western from actor-director/co-writer Tommy Lee Jones walks the tightrope between comic and tragic. Jones and Hilary Swank ignite combustibly.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
It's as stubbornly and cantankerously eccentric as both its wagon drivers, not to mention driven to blaze its own trail through the narrative and mythological landscape of America's defining story form.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"Tommy Lee Jones' riveting Western is bleak and very nearly misanthropic, but it's also passionate, earthy, unpredictable, sensitive, and gloriously distinct."

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Title and director notwithstanding, Tommy Lee Jones' "The Homesman'' is very much a feminist Western - one painting a vivid picture of how difficult it was for even a strong and determined woman to survive in frontier days.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Certainly, there is a sturdiness to it, and a stubborn want of haste, that might have earned an approving growl from John Ford.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
The Homesman is a western hard and true, one that probably comes closer to depicting the hardships of frontier life than any number of more conventional oaters.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The film has more surprising turns than a honeycomb has bees. Absurdity and calamity collide without warning.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
As the protagonists near their final destination, The Homesman offers a critique of civilization that's almost as pessimistic as its critique of frontier life, suggesting that in every corner of America there have always been more losers than winners.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Swank and Streep are big stars with famous faces, and yet disappear into their roles; these characters convey both quiet strength and gentle kindness.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Right or wrong, "The Homesman" belongs to Jones and Swank, and for Western aficionados it's worth seeing.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
An absorbing, melancholy look at the hard lot of women in the Old West.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
While the film is bathed in a beautiful magic-hour glow courtesy of cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, Jones' journey doesn't quite take off.

Name : Elizabeth Weitzman / Alias : New York Daily News
There's a thrilling undercurrent of rebellion in the way this straightforward, seemingly old-fashioned Western takes up the feminist cause.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
A grand, shocking saga of a movie, The Homesman is the kind they don't make much anymore.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Parts of The Homesman are a slog to sit through, but the movie ends on a note of absurd comedy that also breaks your heart, suggesting that some people, no matter the circumstances, are incapable of change.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"The Homesman" may sound like a title conferred on a man, and George Briggs may be driving the wagon. But it is Mary Bee's persistence and prayers that carry the women, and the film, flawed as it sometimes is, home.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
I was impressed with how Jones's uncomfortable mixing of tones in the first half of the film gave way to something more elegiac and evocative by the end.