The Sapphires Reviews
Top CriticThe harmonies they strike in this reality-inspired charmer are sweetly sublime.
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| Original Score: 3/4
You could drive an Abrams tank through the film's plot holes, but you'll likely be too busy enjoying yourself to bother.
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| Original Score: 3/4
"The Sapphires" feels like a movie you've already seen, but it's nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable, like a pop song that's no less infectious when you know every word.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Sapphires is hardly a cinematic diamond mine. But this Commitments-style mashup of music and melodrama manages to entertain without demanding too much of its audience.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's a sweet little tale, and that co-writer Tony Briggs is the son of one of the real-life singers adds to the heart-tugging. In the end, though, it's not quite enough to sustain a feature-length film.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The Sapphiresshouldn't gleam as brightly as it does. The up-from-struggle story follows the predictable form of movies like these, from Dreamgirls to The Commitments. But there's such a sense of joy ... that it's hard not to be won over.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Let's trivialize a legacy of cruelty and denigration, in a country where indigenous people suffered from centuries of human rights abuse! And let's make the carnage of Vietnam look like a paintball game!
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| Original Score: 2/4
[A] genial, entertaining, cliché-ridden showbiz story from Australia.
"The Sapphires" illustrates how the same old story - in this case, the one about a 1960s girl group and its struggles - can be freshened up through the novelties of place and characterization.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
A very conventional story of a '60s Australian girl group gains extra power from its context and setting in this fact-based story set to the beat of Motown soul.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The performers improve it, or save it, depending on your viewpoint.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
"The Sapphires" is a bit like a puppy you're trying to house break. It may have its bad cinematic moments but it's just so darn appealing that you have to love it.
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| Original Score: 3/4
While the fish-out-of-water story remains a little overused, the sweet soul music still provides a terrific hook.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
For the most part Aussie director Wayne Blair's feature debut is snappy and fresh.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A solid, stirring song sung with more sincerity than polish.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Despite some predictable facets, The Sapphires shines brightly.
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| Original Score: 3/4
You could call it an Aussie Dreamgirls. I'd call it a blast of joy and music that struts right into your heart.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Even when "The Sapphires" is at its most unpolished and cheesiest, O'Dowd and the film's general warm spirit make it a tune hard to resist.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
An irresistible if unpolished feature debut from Aussie director Wayne Blair.
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| Original Score: B+
The Sapphires might pass muster as escapist fluff, but its pretensions of significance go woefully awry.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Though the production is unpolished, the music is great and Chris O'Dowd is delightfully droll as the group's boozy manager.
At certain moments, the film feels pretty manipulative, but you know why manipulation is popular? Because it is effective.
Soul music's alleged redemptive powers are fully at work in this jumbled, sketchily written but vastly appealing true-life musical comedy.
A jewel-bright charmer about four spunky indigenous women whose powerhouse voices catapulted them onto the 60s-era world stage as Australia's answer to the Supremes.
