The Angels' Share Reviews
Top CriticIf you want to look for it, you'll find a layer of metaphor (the distilling process as a symbol of the characters' evolution) and social-realist commentary amid the gentle, life-affirming laughs.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Drink it up!
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
[Ken Loach] and his longtime screenwriter, Paul Laverty, find a good balance between drama and wacky character moments.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Much like a stiff drink at the end of a long day, "The Angels' Share" gets the job done, but you're probably not going to remember it in the morning.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Common Sense Media
Loach's realism lends an easygoing, ramshackle quality to the film that smoothes over any lack of tightness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A fairy tale with its feet firmly on the ground.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Capital Times (Madison, WI)
Whether Robbie pulls off his caper should be left for the audience to discover. But Loach's great cinematic switcheroo goes off almost without a hitch.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
East Bay Express
As heartwarming and uplifting as any tale could be that features vicious beatings and grand larceny.
Boston Herald
Lead actor Paul Brannigan, the product of Glasgow's working-class East End, is a natural.
Full Review
| Original Score: B plus
A lark, but it's a serious-minded lark, addressing issues of class and culture, the haves and have-nots.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Charming enough to satisfy even the trenchant-commentary crowd.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Killer Movie Reviews
The usual Loachian elements are all in place, but there is a gentle spirit at work here as well, and not just the alcoholic spirits around which the plot revolves.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Paste Magazine
The Angels' Share is a stellar bit of activist cinema with a light touch.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8.2/10
SSG Syndicate
Sweet-natured and high-spirited, it's a fanciful fable with a wee dash of magical realism.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
Reeling Reviews
This is one of the most likable movies so far this year.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Bloomberg News
Although the English director Ken Loach has been making socially conscious movies for close to 50 years, this shaggy comedy unfolds like the work of a young man on a lark.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
The film itself vaporizes before your eyes, but it's likable. Given its unstable mishmash of thuggery and whimsy, that's something of an achievement.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Like the spirit it celebrates, "The Angel's Share" is a neat little jolt of pleasure - and guaranteed to leave you feeling just a mite warmer.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
