Prodigal Sons Reviews

Documents a moment in a few very specific lives that anyone with a heart and mind can understand and recognise.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10

A multilayered portrait of immense physical, emotional and psychological change.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

Some of the footage is harrowing, some of it moving, but all of it fearlessly real and affecting.

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This combination of amazing coincidences, sibling tensions and identity crises is a natural fit for the documentary form.

Full Review | Original Score: B

An exceptional film...(that helps) illuminate the often painful experience of people trying to move on from dark personal and family pasts.

Full Review | Original Score: B

Prodigal Sons is crazily overstuffed with material, but the material is so strong and so endlessly surprising I can't blame Reed for her reluctance to leave anything out.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

At the heart of Prodigal Sons, a family drama in the form of a succinct, eloquent personal journal, is a sibling rivalry whose reverberations touch upon the very essence of human identity...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

In an era of pop documentaries that reduce their subjects to gimmicky setups and patronizing lessons, Prodigal Sons is a near-profound palate cleanser.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

A consistently generous film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Kimberly Reed started out to make a movie about starting over, but then life got in the way. It didn't make her job harder. It made the movie better.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

The problem with family-diary documentaries is that some families have too much drama for just one movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

The past in Prodigal Sons is pervasive and formidable, to be sure, but it is hardly fixed.

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[An] engrossing, unpredictable, often heartbreaking family-drama documentary.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Sometimes we forget that when documentary filmmakers begin a project, they don't always know what they'll be filming because, to state the obvious, real life doesn't work from a script.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

This is fascinating.

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I love the set up of this one.

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Compelling documentary featuring a remarkably appealing transsexual high-school star quarterback and her adopted, brain-damaged brother who learns he's the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.

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Anybody who has ever doubted that truth is stranger than fiction should see Prodigal Sons.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Well-crafted and intense.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

The emotional intensity combined with the Welles/Hayworth connection should draw attention to help this documentary stand out among independent films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5