Noel delivers two astonishing scenes of love and forgiveness that will take your breath away and are perfectly in tune with the miraculous nature of Christmas.
Comment
11/16/04
Noel (2004)
26
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:9
Rotten:25
Average Rating:4.3/10
Theatrical Release:Nov 12, 2004 Limited
Synopsis: A first-rate cast comes together for this collection of intertwining tales of lonely New Yorkers reaching out to each other on Christmas Eve. Susan Sarandon plays Rose, a widowed editor who spends... [More]
Starring: Penélope Cruz, Susan Sarandon, Alan Arkin, Paul Walker
Director: Chazz Palminteri
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Reviews for Noel
Most of the redemptive notes ring false, as does the mythical Manhattan, where the snow is just too clean and everybody lives around the corner.
11/09/04
Top CriticThe all-star cast do their best, but the individual stories are so truncated that they can't do much in the way of giving their characters real emotional depth.
11/12/04
The mawkishness meter is turned up full blast by the time Williams, wearing the hangdog expression he saves for maudlin dramas, shows up out of nowhere as a former priest to save an unhappy Sarandon from jumping into the East River.
11/12/04
Top CriticI can be sentimental under the right circumstances, but the movie is such a calculating tearjerker that it played like a challenge to me.
11/12/04
Top CriticA handful of competent performances can't keep Noel from pulling its audience through a bleak, cheerless hour and a half.
11/11/04
Top CriticI can think of 59,054,087 people who are intellectually deprived enough to buy into “Noel.”
11/13/04
Fits snugly into the ‘Christmas movie’ canon by tapping into familiar problems, tugging at the heartstrings and stirring your tired soul.
11/23/04
Noel manages to get considerable mileage out of a series of unpredictable and nutty spiritual flights of fancy.
10/29/04
Three tear-jerking stories about faith, love and the redemptive spiritual power of a frosty Christmas Eve
11/24/04
Sentimental and sappy enough to keep a maple syrup factory busy all year long, but isn’t that the point of Christmas movies anyway?
11/11/04
[A] swirl of contrived Christmas Eve ‘magic’ that’s forced and mostly phony and never quite hits the right notes...
11/12/04
Though clearly meant as a heartwarmer in the long-standing holiday tradition, Chazz Palminteri's film comes off as strange and sour.
11/11/04
Top CriticThe kind of sappy, sadness-turns- to-gladness holiday movie that shows up on cable TV this time of year.
11/12/04
Top CriticExcept for die-hard students of extremely bad movies, Noel isn't worth seeing.
11/12/04
Top CriticThe sentiments are right on the money, but the execution never quite filled me with holiday cheer.
11/20/05
Pleasantly watchable.
03/01/07
Boasts just enough good acting to make up for the treacle.
11/11/04
There's nothing at all surprising about Noel, except for the fact that it was ever made.
11/19/05
[Director Chazz] Palminteri seems to have accepted the heavy-handed nature of the screenplay and embraced it whole-heartedly.
10/06/04
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