Before SunriseMovie Reviews

Gifts + Promos

Fandango Gift Card

Give the gift of movies with Fandango Bucks Gift Certificates! Design your own gift card, or choose from our collection.

Avengers Gift Cards

Superhero fans! Don’t miss out on these Limited Edition Avengers gift cards!

Go
Avg. Critic Score: 77 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
16 Iffy for 16+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    It's a lovely and wistful celebration of youth, time and moments of connection -- and about the experience of living in the midst of a simple, perfect day that you know you'll remember for the rest of your life. Read full review

  • 91
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    If Linklater goes to a bit of an extreme here, it's in making both characters so intelligent and sincere, so ardent and giving, that they seem a little too good to believe. Read full review

  • 89
    Austin Chronicle | Marjorie Baumgarten

    Watching and listening to these two is a charming experience; their conversation has the ring of veracity, and rarely does the viewer's interest stray. Read full review

  • 80
    Washington Post | Hal Hinson

    Though Linklater allows the movie to wander, he never allows the pace to slacken, and more often than not he finds some unexpected bit of found poetry or cultural kitsch to make the digressions worthwhile. Read full review

  • 75
    Christian Science Monitor | David Sterritt

    Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are attractive stars, but what's most appealing about the picture is the value it puts on sharing ideas and feelings through language. Read full review

  • 75
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    Before Sunrise is so much like real life - like a documentary with an invisible camera - that I found myself remembering real conversations I had experienced with more or less the same words. Read full review

  • 70
    The New York Times | Elvis Mitchell

    What Mr. Linklater does best here is to come up with conversational gambits that have just the right fancifulness to suit this situation. Read full review

  • 70
    Los Angeles Times | Peter Rainer

    There's nothing much to the movie, except for the amiability of the actors and the layers of feeling Linklater provides, but that's just almost enough. Read full review

  • 60
    Washington Post | Desson Thomson

    Sunrise feels more like an absorbing experiment than a supple success. Read full review

  • 60
    Variety | Todd McCarthy

    While pic remains sympathetic and appealing, the endless dialogue and repetitive settings become wearing through the couple's one long night together, and the artifice of the premise may contribute to the difficulty the film has in coming to romantic life. Read full review


Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+ Two strangers quickly fall in love. Not for kids.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this film's straight-forwardness is bound to make its ideas about sex, romance, and religion convincing to a late-teen audience in search of answers for life's toughest questions. Sex, however, is implied and is dealt with in a very serious, respectful manner.
  • Families can talk about the possible downside to brief romances. Trusting a raffish stranger on a train may be romantic, but could it be dangerous? How does one balance the need to be romantic and free-spirited with responsibility? Is there a way to be careful about romantic relationships without being jaded or unromantic?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: Not an issue
What to watch for
  • violence false0 Violence: Not an issue
  • sex false3 Sex: Lots of frank discussion of sex and love.
  • language false3 Language: Some casual swearing.
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Some drinking.

Facebook Movie Fans