Alive

Not exactly light entertainment and it can drag in places but when the drama is cranked up, it really works. Read full review

Alive does everything it ought to except the one thing you really want with a story like this, and that is transcend its material. A once-in-a-lifetime situation, filled with incidents that almost defy belief, calls for more of a once-in-a-lifetime movie, and that is beyond this film’s powers. Read full review

As engrossing as it is, the movie still tells only half the story: the other, nobler half. Read full review

It's a well-meaning picture, but it doesn't have enough imagination to become as involving as it would like. [22 Jan 1993, p.11]

Despite much fervent talk of the beauty of the mountains and the closeness of God, Alive peters out. [25 Jan 1993, p.55]

Marshall is a good technician, but there's no sense of artistic adventure in his sometimes exciting, sometimes draggy movie. Read full review

In this touching story of boy toys helping boy toys, it's almost impossible to root for characters who are dead in the first place. Read full review

Alive remains remarkably colorless, despite its difficult subject and the harrowing adventure it describes. Read full review

Skilfully crafted and doggedly performed, the film pushes too hard and too far; it strives for the inspirational but falls well short of inspired. Read full review

It doesn’t help that character personalities generally aren’t distinct enough to keep track of who’s who throughout the story, leaving the audience to empathize only generally. Read full review

Director Frank Marshall mounts the story as tastefully as possible, given the subject matter, but it never seems to have much point and is sometimes unintentionally silly. Read full review

Alive represents one of Hollywood's increasingly rare attempts to create a religious drama, but that novelty aside, the film is stiff, overlong and frequently risible. [15 Jan 1993, p.F]

Although the film doesn't live up to complexities of the human issues -- nor the awesome tragedy -- that must have been faced in real life, what you feel watching it is a mixture of horror, moral self-examination, a tinge of inspiration, and -- let's face it on these winter nights -- you feel cold. [15 Jan 1993, p.C1]

Alive is an unsettling contradiction: a well-intentioned gross-out movie. It may be the first film in history to say that cannibalism is good for you. Read full review

Frankly, those wonderfully corny old high-in-the-sky Airport movies were more dramatically satisfying than this, a barren adaptation of Piers Paul Read's nonfiction bestseller, directed by Frank Marshall. Read full review

Even though Frank Marshall's latest film Alive is based on a true story of survival, it lacks the very qualities it means to celebrate - spark, imagination and spirit. [16 Jan 1993]