RottenTomatoes.com
Log In | Register | What is RT?
RT's Blu-ray HQ
  • Home
  • Movies
  • DVD
  • Celebrities
  • News
  • Critics
  • Trailers & Pictures
  • CommunityBeta
  • Box Office
  • | In Theaters
  • | Opening
  • | Upcoming
  • | Best Of
  • | Certified Fresh
  • | Showtimes
RT Search Powered by Google
help icon Enhanced RT
searches on Google
Click here to turn on enhanced search results from RT on your Google searches.
 
Movies / On DVD / Sylvia
Sylvia

Rate this Movie Help Icon

  • Write a Review
  • Read Reviews
  • Add to List
  • Get this Movie
  • Buy Poster External Icon
  • Visit Official Site External Icon
Bookmark and Share

Sylvia (2003)

  • T-Meter Critics
  • Top Critics
  • RT Community
  • My Critics
  • My Friends
  • DVD
27 %
Tomatometer
Template ImageTemplate Image

How does the Tomatometer work Help Icon

Reviews Counted:33

Fresh:9

Rotten:24

Average Rating:5.3/10

Consensus: This biopic about Sylvia Plath doesn't rise above the level of highbrow melodrama.

Rated: R [See Full Rating] for sexuality/nudity and language

Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins

Genre: Dramas

Theatrical Release:Oct 17, 2003 Limited

Box Office: $1,235,406

Synopsis: Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow stars in Sylvia as legendary American author and poet Sylvia Plath, opposite Daniel Craig as British Poet Laureate Edward (Ted) Hughes. Sylvia explores the... Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow stars in Sylvia as legendary American author and poet Sylvia Plath, opposite Daniel Craig as British Poet Laureate Edward (Ted) Hughes. Sylvia explores the source of creative genius, and love in all its passions. Ted and Sylvia were a sensual, volatile, and brilliant married couple who emerged as two of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The film begins in 1956. Sylvia is in England on a Fulbright Scholarship when she meets Ted. The attraction is immediate and mutual. It is a meeting not only of the minds, but of an intense physicality as well. Within four months, they are married. When her studies are completed, Sylvia is offered a teaching post back in America. She accepts, and the couple relocates. A working wife, Sylvia must also tend to her unique voice or risk losing it. The newly published Ted attracts the attention of the literary world, along with the attentions of admiring women. Retuning to England in the late 1959, Sylvia and Ted attempt to renew their commitment, first with the birth of one child and then another. But as the marriage frays anew and Ted's literary stature overshadows her own, Sylvia's creative impulses surge. She funnels her fury and passion into her work, and her writing begins to flow forth in unstoppable bursts. "I really reel like God is speaking through me," she exults. Her destiny -- and Ted's, inextricably intertwined with hers -- is at hand... -- © Focus Features [More]

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, Blythe Danner

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, Blythe Danner, Michael Gambon

Director: Christine Jeffs

Director: Christine Jeffs
Screenwriter: John Brownlow
Producer: Alison Owen
Composer: Gabriel Yared
Studio: Focus Features

[See More Credits]

  • Trailers
  • Pictures
1 - 5 of 20

See More Movie Trailers & Pictures

Get This Movie

Rent DVD
 
 

Click on the "ADD" button to put this movie into your Netflix queue.

 
 
Buy DVD
 
 
Release:

Feb 10, 2004

No Details Exist
 
 

Reviews for Sylvia

  • T-Meter Critics
  • Top Critics
  • RT Community
  • My Critics
  • My Friends
  • DVD
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date)
Text View | 1 2 >> >|
Arrange By:Fresh | Rotten | Comments | Name | Source | Date
 
 
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Newsweek | comment Comment
11/01/07
David Ansen
David Ansen
Newsweek
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: New Republic | comment Comment
11/12/03
Stanley Kauffmann
Stanley Kauffmann
New Republic
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Paltrow does this role exceptionally well, but it is underwritten.

Full Review Source: New York Daily News | comment Comment
11/06/03
Jack Mathews
Jack Mathews
New York Daily News
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Cinema and poetry aren't merely disparate art forms but largely incompatible ones.

Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | comment Comment
11/01/03
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

By choosing to make Hughes neither a monster nor sympathetic, the film likely will disappoint Plath acolytes while at the same time falling shy of being a revisionist interpretation of their relationship.

Full Review Source: Houston Chronicle | comment Comment
10/31/03
Eric Harrison
Eric Harrison
Houston Chronicle
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

An often painful, surprisingly illuminating and emotionally complex portrait of a woman who is ultimately as mysterious as her art.

Full Review Source: Detroit Free Press | comment Comment
10/31/03
Terry Lawson
Terry Lawson
Detroit Free Press
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Adds precisely nothing of breaking-news value to the Plath-Hughes annals.

Full Review Source: Washington Post | comment Comment
10/24/03
Desson Thomson
Desson Thomson
Washington Post
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

For all the actors' ability, Sylvia never develops a pulse.

Full Review Source: Washington Post | comment Comment
10/24/03
Ann Hornaday
Ann Hornaday
Washington Post
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Likely to be equally displeasing to Plath enthusiasts as it will be to neophytes, Sylvia suffers from a strange timidity: It only gets close to its subject by rendering her as a kind of melodramatic archetype.

Full Review Source: Toronto Star | comment Comment
10/24/03
Geoff Pevere
Geoff Pevere
Toronto Star
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

[Lacks] psychological depth and emotional resonance.

Full Review Source: San Jose Mercury News | comment Comment
10/24/03
Glenn Lovell
Glenn Lovell
San Jose Mercury News
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

A coy, cautious film about a frank, fearless writer.

Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | comment Comment
10/24/03
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The film does what poets so seldom do themselves -- pursue the middle road and leave the path of excess to the less level-headed.

Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | comment Comment
10/24/03
Rick Groen
Rick Groen
Globe and Mail
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

For those who have read the poets and are curious about their lives, Sylvia provides illustrations for the biographies we carry in our minds.

Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | comment 1 Comment
10/24/03
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The results are mixed, but noble.

Full Review Source: Boston Globe | comment Comment
10/24/03
Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris
Boston Globe
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Odd that a story of two such hot-burning lives as Plath and Hughes could leave us so cold.

Full Review Source: Denver Post | comment Comment
10/24/03
Michael Booth
Michael Booth
Denver Post
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Jeffs' movie flashes too little poetic lightning of its own.

Full Review Source: Denver Rocky Mountain News | comment Comment
10/24/03
Robert Denerstein
Robert Denerstein
Denver Rocky Mountain News
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Offers a wondrously illuminating artistic experience for its ideal audience -- people like me who know a little but not much about the explosive Plath-Hughes fusion of unbridled poetic temperaments in a tauntingly prosaic world.

Full Review Source: New York Observer | comment Comment
10/23/03
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
New York Observer
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Paltrow successfully transmits Plath's mental distress and her desperation to shake off a mounting depression.

Full Review Source: Arizona Republic | comment Comment
10/23/03
Bill Muller
Bill Muller
Arizona Republic
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

So suffocating, so lugubrious is the film that Sylvia didn't need to gas herself to death. Jeffs deprives her of oxygen.

Full Review Source: Philadelphia Inquirer | comment Comment
10/23/03
Carrie Rickey
Carrie Rickey
Philadelphia Inquirer
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

No one expects this to be the feel-good show of the year, but Jeffs' approach is so maudlin that by the end, Plath won't be the only one who's depressed.

Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune | comment Comment
10/23/03
Jeff Strickler
Jeff Strickler
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date)
Text View | 1 2 >> >|
all

Latest News for Sylvia

October 14, 2005: It's Official: Daniel Craig is 007
ComingSoon.net shares with us the long-in-coming announcement, and it's one that shouldn't stun any of the astute movie geeks: British actor Daniel Craig has been signed to play... More...

See All

More DVDs

Close
Top Rentals
Tomatometer Percentage Movie
15% 15% The Ugly Truth
98% 98% Up
36% 36% G.I. Joe: The Rise of …
52% 52% The Taking of Pelham 1…
45% 45% Ice Age: Dawn of the D…

More Rentals…

New On DVD This Week
Tomatometer Percentage Movie
36% 36% Angels & Demons
68% 68% Funny People
25% 25% Four Christmases
45% 45% Shorts

More New Releases…

See All

RT On Current TV

The Rotten Tomatoes Show on Current TV

DIRECTV 358 | Comcast 107 | DISH Network 196 | More...

Learn how you can be part of the show

More...

What’s Hot On RT

Total Recall

Total Recall

John Travolta's top reviewed movies

Disney Countdown

Disney Countdown

Look back on Disney's best animated movies!

RT's Gift Guide

RT's Gift Guide

Give the best movies, gear, and more!

What's Coming Out

What's Coming Out

Find movies for the holiday weekend!

Other News

Close
  • Top Stories
  • Popular
  • Interviews
 
 

Comments

 
 
Top Stories
Headlines Comments
  
  • First Look (Sort Of) at New Nightmare's Freddy Source: ShockTillYouDrop.com
15
  • First Look at Shrek Forever After Source: USA Today
40
  • Woody Harrelson Will Battle Zombies in 3-D Source: Moviehole
24
  • Natalie Portman Says Kat Denning Is in Thor Source: MTV
34
  • Disney Restructuring Has Broad Implications Source: Los Angeles Times
10
  • Joel Silver Talks Ninja Assassin, Sgt. Rock, Lobo, and More Source: Collider.com
1
  • Weekly Ketchup: Idris Elba cast in Thor, more Spider-Man 4 rumors
118
  • Idris Elba Joins Thor Source: Hollywood Reporter
112
  • Jackass 3D Coming in 2010? Source: Collider.com
32
  • 6 Reasons 'Twilight' Is Doomed Source: The Wrap
64
Popular
Headlines Comments
  
  • Box Office Guru Wrapup: New Moon Shatters Records
177
  • Critics Consensus: New Moon Wanes
130
  • Total Recall: John Travolta's Best Movies
76
  • Total Recall: Star-Crossed Lovers
75
  • Weekly Ketchup: Idris Elba cast in Thor, more Spider-Man 4 rumors
59
  • Critics Consensus: Flee From Ninja Assassin
37
  • Friday Harvest: New Moon, Avatar, and more!
32
  • WB offers DVD to Blu-ray Trade-In Program
26
  • RT on DVD & Blu-Ray: Angels & Demons, Funny People, and Superman
18
  • Five Favorite Films With Zombieland Director Ruben Fleischer
18
Interviews
Headlines Comments
  
  • "I Don't Hate Women": Lars von Trier on Antichrist
13
  • Eric Bana talks Love the Beast - RT Interview
9
  • Fight Club Sound Designer Reflects on Film's 10th Anniversary
19
  • James Schamus talks Taking Woodstock - RT Interview
6
  • John Hurt Talks Harry Potter, Quentin Crisp and Alien - The RT Interview
15
  • Terry Gilliam Talks Doctor Parnassus
20
  • Wes Anderson Talks Fantastic Mr. Fox - RT Interview
8
  • Wolverine Creator Len Wein Talks About the Film
28
  • Gavin Hood Talks Wolverine; Possible Sequel
28
  • Duncan Jones talks Moon, Sam Rockwell, and Mute
14
 
 

Sponsored Links

Around The Network

  • Sylvia at Rotten Tomatoes
  • Sylvia at AskMen

Fresh Links

Featured
Wes Anderson on Fox
Wes Anderson on Fox External Link

The director talks about puppetry perfection and his film, Fantastic Mr. Fox

Animated Oscar?
Animated Oscar? External Link

Hollywood.com ponders whether or not an animated film could win Best Picture.

TIME's Holiday Movie Preview
TIME's Holiday Movie Preview External Link

Richard Corliss previews the season's best offerings and hottest tickets.

Scenic Routes
Scenic Routes External Link

The AV Club's Mike D'Angelo airs his beefs with Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men.

Promos
Follow RT on Twitter
Follow RT on Twitter External Link

Get the latest Tomatometer updates on upcoming movies!

 
 
About| Site Map| Help| RT To Go| Contact Us| Critics Submission| Linking to RT| Licensing| Movie List| Games| Celebs List| Newsletter
IGN Logo

IGN.com | GameSpy | Comrade | Arena | FilePlanet | GameSpy Technology
TeamXbox | Planets | Vaults | VE3D | CheatsCodesGuides | GameStats | GamerMetrics
AskMen.com | Rotten Tomatoes | Direct2Drive | Green Pixels


By continuing past this page, and by the continued use of this site, you agree to be bound by and abide by the User Agreement.
Copyright 1998-2009, IGN Entertainment, Inc. About IGN | Support | Advertise | Privacy Policy | User Agreement | Subscribe to RT's XML feed! IGN RSS Feeds
IGN's enterprise databases running Oracle, SQL and MySQL are professionally monitored and managed by Pythian Remote DBA
Certain product data ©1995-present Muze, Inc. For personal use only. All rights reserved.