One Bright Shining Moment
First Run Features | Release Date: September 16, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
2
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Lively documentary about McGovern's disastrous run for the US presidency. The interviews with him are worth the price of admission. Read full review
80
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
A lively, long, intelligent documentary. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
It's a deeply flawed film but also an important one. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Running just a little over two hours and wordily narrated by talk-radio host Amy Goodman, Stephen Vittoria's hagiography spends more time bemoaning the past 30 years of U.S. political history and setting the dismal tone for McGovern's arrival on the political scene than it does on his 1972 campaign. Read full review
70
VarietyJohn Anderson
"Too decent to be president" was the label stuck to former senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern, the self-effacing subject of Stephen Vittoria's One Bright Shining Moment. If "decent" means "polite," then the movie makes no effort to emulate its subject. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklySteven Mikulan
The strength of One Bright Shining Moment lies in its reminder of McGovern's critical role in reforming the way his party chose its convention delegates, and how prescient he had always been about the looming disaster of Vietnam. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Instructive but aggressively biased liberal history lesson. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The film's greatest asset and strongest selling point is the former senator from South Dakota himself, thoughtful and articulate at age 83, who talks candidly, even eloquently, about his political career. Read full review
50
The New York TimesJanet Maslin
Still, as the documentary plods past the two-hour mark, much of Mr. McGovern's legend seems dependent on Nixon's faults, and even the Democrat's political supporters, with hindsight's many gifts, can't infuse his persona with any more dynamism. Read full review
30
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Amy Goodman's narration, though correct, has a petulant, Spanish Inquisition ring to it, only made more childish by the film's cheap idealization of the senator from South Dakota as some kind of pacifist Savonarola, overdue for canonization. Read full review
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