Never Let Me Go
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: September 15, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
69
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is a good movie, from a masterful novel. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Corliss
Poignant, troubling and altogether splendid new film. Read full review
90
Boxoffice MagazinePam Grady
The drama boasts a stellar cast, exquisite performances and a tense atmosphere. It is a film that the author's fans and lovers of mature, measured storytelling will embrace. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter Debruge
Never Let Me Go is that rare find, a fragile little four-leaf clover of a movie that's emotionally devastating, yet all too easily trampled by cynics. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 24, 2010
A beautifully mopey adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's much-praised novel. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The melancholy attached to the impermanence of life and love suffuses this film, making it memorably haunting and hypnotic. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Anyone who saw the Oscar-nominated Mulligan in "An Education" knows what she can do. If you didn't, you're in for the kind of quietly revelatory acting that portends a brilliant career. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
May be too sterile and stylized to elicit real tears, but it's got brains and heart to spare. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Best approached with little to no advance information or expectations, which is the same way the film's characters experience their lives. Read full review
80
EmpireDan JolinFeb 7, 2011
A beautifully realised adaptation of a profoundly affecting novel. Intelligent sci-fi provides the backdrop, while in the foreground is a trio of truly impressive performances from Mulligan, Knightley and Garfield. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Director Mark Romanek captures the slightly seedy and rundown reality of '70s and '80s British life in astonishing and even tragic detail; this is more like a period piece than a science-fiction movie. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
The surface blandness does not efface, and might even amplify, its disturbing qualities. Never Let Me Go is not a movie about death but, more painfully, about the consciousness of death. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
This is a moving and provocative film that initially unsettles, then disturbs and finally haunts you well into the night. Read full review
80
NPRMark Jenkins
Despite its fanciful premise, Never Let Me Go looks and feels utterly real. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
What we see is admirable, but what we feel is minimal. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The film is a success. It works. Greatness eludes it, yes. But greatness eludes almost every film adaptation of a major novel, which we must remember when confronted by a good one. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
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. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The film is sad in a beautiful, peaceful manner, and its exploration of mortality is different from most others, since the three central protagonists are all barely in their 30s. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleAmy Biancolli
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. Read full review
75
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike Scott
Never Let Me Go isn't the kind of movie you talk about on the drive home -- it's even better. It's the kind that makes you sit quietly and think, rolling it around in your head and considering the angles. Read full review
70
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
A film more moving than most but not as devastating as it should be. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
The world depicted in Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go is among the more beautiful dystopias in film history. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
The subdued characters I can abide, intellectually speaking, but subdued filmmaking with material this fundamentally gut-punching is a lot less easy to swallow. Read full review
65
MovielineEric Hynes
Knightley has the least screen time of the three, and her Ruth never registers as much more than a self-serving menace. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Epitomizes the kind of somber, aesthetically refined and morally engaged film that commands deep respect without inspiring much affection. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Amazingly, Never Let Me Go could have been assembled from the Merchant-Ivory kit. It's stale with suppressed anguish. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It is an accepted truth that adapting a sublime novel does not always result in a sublime movie. To an extent, this is the problem with Never Let Me Go. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterStephen Farber
Expertly acted, impeccably photographed, intelligently written, even intermittently touching, the film is also too parched and ponderous to connect with a large audience. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
For its delicate tone, provocative themes, impeccable craftsmanship and superb performances-by Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley-Never Let Me Go earned my great admiration. I wish I'd been affected in equal measure, but I wasn't, and it's not the sort of film you can will yourself to enjoy. Read full review
58
Entertainment Weekly
It's a very tony fantasy of class oppression and fascist medical exploitation (themes that may speak louder in England), but it's a lyrically inert movie. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
You don't have to get too far into Kazuo Ishiguro's brilliant 2005 novel Never Let Me Go to realize it's hopelessly unfilmable. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Alas, what's missing is the spark of life, the jolt of the unexpected - something beyond tears - to puncture the falseness of a film world, which, by its insistence on its own beauty, obscures the tragedy that the three characters, by their nature, cannot express. Read full review
50
USA TodayScott Bowles
Just as its characters need a reason to live, Go needs a reason for audiences to watch. Neither find much satisfaction. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve Persall
Imagine a stuffy Merchant Ivory production blended with muted Michael Crichton sci-fi and you have Never Let Me Go, at least as it plays on screen. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
Science fiction movies don't come much more ponderous than the beautifully filmed Never Let Me Go, which reduces the debate over genetic engineering to a mild, moist romantic soap opera. Read full review
40
Time OutKeith Uhlich
The stylistic conceit of keeping us entirely with the clones (so that we are as ill-informed as they are and never get to meet their powerful oppressors) only reveals what an empty-headed abstraction this tale was from both page and frame one Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Never Let Me Go is in such good taste that we never feel any horror over the idea at the center of it. Read full review
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