It's a Wonderful Life Reviews

This is the all-time great, curl-up-on-the-sofa-with-a-cup-of-tea movie. Not only is it beautifully photographed, but it also contains enough emotional strength to hold your attention for all of its two-hour running time.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

It's a Wonderful Life is about hunger. It's about greed. It's about the many ways a good man is stymied. Finally, it's about George Bailey, whose decency prevents him even from killing himself.

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I wasn't able to get reasonably straight about it for quite a while. I still think it has a good deal of charm and quality, enough natural talent involved in it to make ten pictures ten times as good, and terrific vitality or, rather, vigor.

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Capra is an old-time movie craftsman, the master of every trick in the bag, and in many ways he is more at home with the medium than any other Hollywood director. But all of his details give the impression of contrived effect.

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This classic delivers warmth all year long.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

Is the movie corny? Often. Is it moving in the most basic, moral way? Every year we watch it.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

One could use It's a Wonderful Life to teach their children values: compassion, selflessness, loyalty, and self-respect.

Full Review | Original Score: 93/100

Raise your hand if you think 'It's A Wonderful Life' is mushy, sentimental, over-praised hokum. Now, go to your room. Both of you.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10

If you can separate - or rescue - It's a Wonderful Life from its niche as a Christmas classic, you might discover a film that swings wildly from noirlike starkness to saccharine bathos.

Full Review | Original Score: 87/100

It's a Wonderful Life is a pretty wonderful movie.

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A genuine American classic.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

You'd have to possess a very hard heart not to find something to love in this story.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

It ain't just hype; it really is a true holiday classic.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

Without overlooking its lapses into populist bathos, it's necessary to rescue It's a Wonderful Life from its spot at the centerpiece of untouchable American "classics."

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

George Bailey and Bedford Falls never looked so good!

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10

The epiphany of movie sentiment and a transcendent experience.

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The April-air wholesomeness and humanism of this natural bring back vividly the reminder that, essentially, the screen best offers unselfconscious, forthright entertainment.

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History vindicated Capra: Though failure at the time of release, the superbly acted film (terrific Jimmy Stewart) is recognized today as undisputable masterpiece; the film's message didn't fit the disillusioned mood of the country right after WWII

Full Review | Original Score: A

As warm and comforting as a scarf knit by Grandma.

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Deserving of one viewing per year, preferably without the interruption of commercials.

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