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Critics Consensus: With Never Let Me Go, Mark Romanek has delivered a graceful adaptation that captures the spirit of the Ishiguro novel -- which will be precisely the problem for some viewers.
Critic Consensus: With Never Let Me Go, Mark Romanek has delivered a graceful adaptation that captures the spirit of the Ishiguro novel -- which will be precisely the problem for some viewers.
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All Critics (177) | Top Critics (34) | Fresh (123) | Rotten (54) | DVD (1)
Pretty, empty, and immediately forgettable.
Never Let Me Go is gorgeous. And depressing. It's exquisitely acted. And depressing. It's romantic, profound and superbly crafted, shot with the self-contained radiance of a snow globe. And it's depressing.
Oddly cold and detached, as if director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland couldn't decide precisely how to interpret Kazuo Ishiguro's popular novel and so they just laid it out flat. And flat it feels.
Never Let Me Go, director Mark Romanek's introspective adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, is a work of subtle beauty -- a melancholy meditation on the finality of life and the choices we make as our time shortens.
Never Let Me Go is strangely moving and mournful, but I wish more had been made of the beauty these people are relinquishing, if only as a counterweight to all that artful drear.
The emotional impact creeps up on the reader only gradually. Then, bam, it hits forcefully, memorably, and, yes, never lets us go.
In struggling to meet the profound levels of its literary forbearer, the film finds itself in that unfortunate no-man's land between light entertainment and high-end art - satisfying neither the movie aficionado nor the casual cinema-goer.
Tragic, beautiful and simultaneously strange and familiar, Never Let Me Go serves a unique slant on the universal human condition.
Perhaps such passive solemnity is true to the book, but on screen, along with the sad tinkling piano and the sad violins that just won't quit, the overall effect is so enervating that you simply don't feel a damned thing.
Never Let Me Go is an unrelentingly bleak film in which you watch these three characters grow up and march towards their doom.
The lack of dramatic tension means it's difficult to emotionally connect with the central characters and their dilemma.
Only when the girls team up does the film start to fulfill its promise.
This melancholy and depressing film adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's dystopian sci-fi novel tells an achingly sad story that eschews any easy preaching and offers a delicate meditation on time and the transience of life, with very intense performances by its main trio.
Super Reviewer
A sad tone poem about the lives of clones developed purely to harvest their body parts. Can't say more than that, can one? But I'll try. Good performances, solid production values and yet ... the whole movie's like getting a bowl of hot, melted ice cream at your dearly beloved grandmother's funeral. Like taking a group of puppies to the animal shelter. Like being the only one to work on Christmas Day and finding you have to do a double cause yer relief's not coming in. You get it. I kept asking myself: " How long can this go on?"
I can understand that the message the film gives is pretty awesome. However, I couldn't really connect with the movie as much as I wanted to. I felt most of it was forced and too dour to be relatable.
Excellent acting takes you on a journey into a world that could easily be . . dark, haunting, and very heartbreaking story of coming to age knowing what will be at the end of the journey . .completion . .
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