Philadelphia Reviews
Common Sense Media
Moving, Oscared '90s drama fostered AIDS empathy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Top Critic[An] extremely well-made message picture about tolerance, justice and discrimination is pitched at mainstream audiences, befitting its position as the first major Hollywood film to directly tackle the disease.
Safe and apolitical it may be, but Philadelphia succeeds as a deeply affecting humanist drama.
EmanuelLevy.Com
Wearing its heart on its sleeves, this well-intentioned but soft and compromised AIDS drama may nonetheless perform the same function that Paltoon or Schindler's List have: Change public opinion about an urgent problem.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Capital Times (Madison, WI)
The courtroom stuff is unwieldly, but everything else is brave and moving.
| Original Score: 3/5
TheMovieReport.com
Manages to be humorous and moving without being too preachy or heavy-handed.
About.com
Excellent performances and the sensitive handling of complicated issues.
| Original Score: 4/5
"Philadelphia" mostly succeeds in being forceful, impassioned and moving, sometimes even rising to the full range of emotion that its subject warrants. But too often, even at its most assertive, it works in safely predictable ways.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
