Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
With its exhilarating World War II narrative and performances that touch notes intimate and grand, Simon and the Oaks has an exquisite, and epic, ache. Read full review
Simon and the Oaks is not merely the story of two boys from opposite sides of the tracks. It's also a larger meditation on life's hardships and what endures: love, art and civilization. Read full review
It is unabashedly sentimental and epic, and rather bold in the way it takes place during and after the Holocaust but is not defined by it. Read full review
The film is at its best when it lingers on intimacy and the characters' incompetency to manage it. Read full review
Alternates languidly between wistful nostalgia and a more clear-eyed assessment of its protagonist's choices. Read full review
The film never finds the right mix of the epic and the intimate - the personal as seen through the 20th century's Euro-geopolitical turmoil - that it aims for. Read full review
The classical music is soothing, the cinematography handsome and the acting strong, but the Swedish coming-of-age saga Simon and the Oaks is burdened with a sappy, soap-opera-ish script. Read full review
It's as if there's a missing reel of film that could tie the story together and give it the emotional impact it takes for granted. Read full review
It's a sumptuously mounted melodrama that aims to make a big statement about big themes, but a stilted quality in the filmmaking drags it down. Read full review
Worst of all is the hitching of all this extravagant suffering to an inspirational ending filled with sweet regret, healing hope and some picturesque nestling in the titular oaks with the next generation. Read full review