The movie seems unusually honest in portraying the no-option existence of the working poor, but the story slips into melodrama in the last reel.
Comment
12/08/08
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Sleepwalking (2008)
18
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:22
Fresh:4
Rotten:18
Average Rating:4.3/10
Consensus: Despite some sharp performances, Sleepwalking suffers from a grimness of tone and sluggish pacing.
Theatrical Release:Mar 14, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: Nick Stahl (Sin City, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines), AnnaSophia Robb (Bridge to Terabithia, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Academy Award® winner Charlize Theron (Monster, North... [More]
Starring: Charlize Theron, Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb, Dennis Hopper
Director: William Maher
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Reviews for Sleepwalking
Top CriticIt’s a film of mood -- and the mood is perfectly captured.
03/24/08
Top CriticSleepwalking provides character arcs for its two protagonists but neither is as interesting or memorable as the performances warrant.
03/21/08
Top CriticPortentous and dull, the film features one of the worst over-the-top performances by Dennis Hopper, who plays an abusive father. His role upends what could have been a mildly interesting family drama.
03/14/08
Top CriticSaddled with a title all too true to its somnambulist pace, Sleepwalking is a textbook case of a bad movie partially redeemed by good acting.
03/14/08
Top CriticSleepwalking is a slow-moving family drama guaranteed to induce a nap if not somnambulism.
03/14/08
Top CriticThe people never come alive, and the unremitting nastiness of the material is like being beaten with soggy towels for 90 minutes. Maybe another director and other leads might have helped.
03/14/08
Top CriticBeware any movie that ends with a cliché as dire as 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life.' What comes before that in Sleepwalking is relentlessly depressing.
03/14/08
Top CriticIt's no easy task staying awake through Sleepwalking, a downbeat debut from Bill Maher (no, not that one). Only a typically intense performance from co-star Nick Stahl offers the jolt needed to keep us alert.
03/14/08
Top CriticTerrific performances and a bleak, riveting look at life on the economic fringes eventually gives way to an overly familiar tale of abuse, denial and catharsis that feels like warmed over Sam Shepard minus the poetry.
03/14/08
Top CriticThe transparently familiar issues -- abuse, unemployment, parental neglect, promiscuity -- are stapled onto characters who never seem credible.
03/14/08
Top CriticThe movie seems terrified of true psychological complexity or perversity. It's less a family tragedy than a lousy country dirge.
03/14/08
Top CriticSleepwalking is a frustrating case because Stahl, Robb and Theron all give performances that are subtle, delicate and smart -- it's just that they're steamrollered by the movie's relentlessness.
03/14/08
Top CriticCharlize Theron only gets better as an actress, and she certainly wouldn't sign on to a low-budget indie such as Sleepwalking without believing in the material. The material, alas, does Theron no favors.
03/14/08
Top CriticFilmed mostly in winter, in browns, grays and soiled whites, Sleepwalking sustains a mood of unrelenting bleakness, wearing its aesthetic of desolation like a badge of integrity.
03/14/08
Top CriticAn inert, sloppily written melodrama as grim and featureless as its frozen Midwestern setting.
03/13/08
Top CriticRelentlessly downbeat, with a glimmer of a payoff in the last couple of scenes, Sleepwalking is a film that has 'indie' written all over it -- for better and for worse.
03/13/08
Top CriticIf you had programmed a computer to come up with a movie that is nothing but a string of the deadliest indie-film situations and moods, you'd have Sleepwalking, a soporific dud, which should have been tossed out of Sundance.
03/12/08
Top CriticWhen you see how hopeless the lives of the American people have become in endless independent films that drive the movie audience away in mobs, you understand why the big, dumb action comics and Will Ferrell alleged comedies make all the money.
03/12/08
Top CriticSleepwalking stands as a heartening reminder that the future of American cinema may rest with those independent filmmakers working far from the bottom-line executives heading the shattered remnants of the old Hollywood studios.
03/12/08
Top CriticLatest News for Sleepwalking
July 04, 2008:
Taking its cue from the tabloids, this is yet another addition to that tacky category of scandal sheet cinema. Why do celebrities with charmed Hollywood lives imagine everyday people as a bunch of sleazy or dimwitted degenerates, misfits and assassins. 
More...
March 17, 2008:
Charlize Theron Has Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
She'll spend the summer blending humor and superhero action with Will Smith and Jason Bateman in Hancock, but Charlize Theron already has Vengeance on her mind. More...
March 14, 2008:
Taking its cue from the tabloids, this is yet another addition to that tacky category of scandal sheet cinema. Why do celebrities with charmed Hollywood lives imagine everyday people as a bunch of sleazy or dimwitted degenerates, misfits and assassins.
More...
March 13, 2008:
Critics Consensus: Who's Better, Who's Best; Never Goes Down; Guess Doomsday's Tomatometer!
This week at the movies, we've Seussian silliness (Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, starring Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell), mixed martial arts madness (Never Back Down, starring... More...
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