Name : Simon Abrams / Alias : Village Voice
The Face of an Angel may not be like any other whodunit you've seen, but it's also only superficially smarter than the genre it defines itself against.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
A picture that trades any suspense for endless scenes of a bored Bruhl staring at a screen, trying to find a story. Any story.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Past Winterbottom films have turned "real life" into both comedy and tragedy. The Face Of An Angel turns it into a directionless skulk.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
[A] silly metamovie based on the Amanda Knox murder case.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
There's a great deal of intelligent material here. Winterbottom mounts a harsh attack on our fascination with killers and our tendency to forget the victim. Yet it's overlaid with so much navel-gazing, it's hard to take.

Name : Deborah Young / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
There are many good things in the swiftly-moving narrative, filmed with a hand-held camera to give a documentary look.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
Rambling, frustrating and wholly uninvolving, "The Face of an Angel" swarms with ideas that have no place to land.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Like the floundering filmmaker at its center, "The Face of an Angel" never seems sure of what story it wants to tell.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The film does occasionally show a pulse when it tries to re-imagine the life of the victim - when it turns the tables on the mystery and tries to become a film about love and life, instead of doom and death. But it's too little, too late, and too lame.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
The Face of an Angel ties itself up in some strange knots, but Michael Winterbottom conjures up a haunting gothic atmosphere in Siena.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Winterbottom is not out to thrill, but to lecture on the truth, which, he believes, can only be found in fiction.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
A lovely-looking yet muddled meditation on truth.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Leave it to Harrison Ford to pull off a rescue that one of his signature heroes might envy. In a deftly crafted supporting role, Ford does as much as Lively herself to shape Adaline's strange predicament into something genuinely resonant.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Lovers of the genre will find plenty to love about the stylish Age of Adaline and may find themselves rooting through pockets for a tissue at points, a romance movie equivalent of a standing ovation.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
Lively's never been better, but "Adaline" is more interested in what she's wearing than what her character's thinking.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Starved of sufficient comedy or drama, "The Age of Adaline" is a pipsqueak.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Far too often here, Adaline's parade of period dresses, coats and handbags stand in for the richness of human experience.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A sweeping romance beautifully wrapped in classy couture and slightly suspect in the way it uses metaphysics to manipulate matters of the heart.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
The makings of an interesting movie are here, but the script, written by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, collapses on itself in the third act.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
Lively glides across the screen from scene to scene - like the ballroom of a grand old hotel with a suitor in hot pursuit - with all the emotional weight of a model in a perfume commercial.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Okay, it's hooey. "Adaline" is not a documentary. What it is, though, is seductive.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Lively's performance is appropriately mysterious but too shallow to allow audiences to empathize with her character. The fault lies more in the screenplay, which doesn't give her character much depth.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Plausibility, shmausibility. This is pretty schmaltz done right.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A preposterous premise treated with great solemnity. Lively shines, though, as does Ford.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"The Age of Adaline" works best as a simple story of boy meets girl; girl falls in love; girl mulls whether or not to reveal that she'll stay young forever. Everything else is just a lot of unnecessary noise.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Someone should steal this concept and make a decent movie out of it.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The Age of Adaline has a fundamental weakness: The tepid romance is supposed to structure everything else, so the film feels disjointed - a series of good, sometimes even great scenes in search of an organizing principle.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Adaline is consistently gorgeous to look at-and a good reminder that love, even when it's complicated or painful or doesn't last, is a whole lot better than immortality.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The Age of Adaline is a modern romantic fairy tale set in San Francisco, marred by bad narration and an unnecessary desire to overexplain random magic.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
It fails to pursue any of the fascinating questions its premise raises. Instead, it dives headfirst into Nicholas Sparks territory and explores, though not without some charm, Adaline's romantic life.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Burstyn is as beautiful and emotionally present as always and Ford - after so many years of grumpily picking up paychecks - seems delighted to be acting again, and in a real movie.

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
Again and again, director Lee Toland Krieger (Celeste & Jesse Forever) allows shades of a more nuanced movie to pop up along the margins, only to steer instead toward innocent niceties.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Blake Lively's subtle, expressive performance sets the tone for this thoroughly ludicrous, thoroughly enjoyable romantic drama.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Ultimately, you believe Lively as an old soul in a young body, carrying a heavy secret; you hope, somehow, that love will bring her a happy ending.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
The film is as tender and endearing as a lamb, a lamb at rest in a fragrant atmosphere. It's a film that has a determined, unironic respect for things past.

Name : Jon Frosch / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Lively is an odd screen presence - somehow both warm and cold, accessible and recessive. She's long been ripe for a breakthrough lead role that allows her to stretch and surprise.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
For a movie that emulates literature, The Age Of Adaline never fits comfortably into a particular form-literary or cinematic.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
For a movie about a 106-year-old - albeit one trapped in the body of a 29-year-old - "The Age of Adaline" doesn't have a lot of wisdom.