All Critics (151)
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Top Critics (35)
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Fresh (99)
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Rotten (56)
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DVD (15)
The film is slick when it needs to be raw, tidy when it needs to sprawl, and amorphous when it needs to focus.
This is not a simple, uplifting tale. It's never clear whether Charlie will fully recover, and that sense of realism is the film's strength.
At the very least, it puts a whole new spin on Billy Madison.
Reign Over Me isn't nearly as arresting as it should be given its powerful subject matter.
There are lots of things in the script that ring false, but the acting is honest, witty and soulful. Sandler's performance is perfectly believable while the weak link, surprisingly enough, is the writing.
Mike Binder's oddball film keeps retreating into fantasy -- as if to avoid precisely the kind of issues that have kept the studios from confronting the legacy of 9/11.
Mike Binder, a director of TV-sized smarm, continues to dismantle his own best effects
Reign Over Me is like spending two hours with a shrink. Self-absorbed and repetitive, it has an occasional moment of truth, and a lot of hot air.
A personal drama made accessible by Binder's unusual touch.
Grief-stricken Adam Sandler deals with 9/11.
It's a gripping and very sad glimpse at grief and it's lasting effects on us when we truly lose something we cherish...
The main problem is Reign Over Me always skirts around the issue instead of tackling it head on. Depression and loss are hell, and hopefully friends can be there to bring you out of it.
Extras on the disc include a 'making of' featurette, an extended musical jam session with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle, and a photo montage.
Like the characters populating it, this film leaves us with a sense that something is missing, but it's still smart, compelling, offbeat, and worth seeing.
Sandler simply exploits 9/11 to free his character to launch politically-incorrect bile in the direction of Latinos, gays and any other easy targets unfortunate enough to cross his path.
In a way, it's Rain Man with a different disorder and without the road trip.
This sometimes rough ride of a story surprises with Sandler's often striking intensity, when not straying too far into dramatic overkill.
Pretty much a run-of-the-mill carbon copy of Rain Man.
Has its heart in the right place, and its message that everyone should be able to grieve in their own time is admirable, but Mr. Binder doesn't have enough to say to sustain the film's running time.
Performances by Sandler and Cheadle give the film enough of what it needs in order to recommend it.
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