We Live in Time
A24 | Release Date: October 11, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 47 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
18
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The TimesKevin MaherJan 3, 2025
This is a film that, at its best, while softly cradling its two battered protagonists, is also howling madly at the shadow of mortality. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenSep 8, 2024
There’s an achingly palpable, playful chemistry between Pugh and Garfield that leaps off the screen. But they also refuse to shy away from letting their characters’ less attractive qualities bleed through. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerOct 17, 2024
Crowley doesn’t blink at the cradle-to-grave graphic intimacy of Payne’s script, and in Garfield and Pugh he finds a duo who understand the deceptions and devotions of a beautifully flawed relationship. Watch ’em and weep, kids. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 15, 2024
With Pugh and Garfield delivering authentic, genuine movie-star performances, “We Live in Time” is an old-fashioned weeper, done with heart and originality. It’s a Movie We Think You’ll Like. Read full review
83
The Film StageJared MobarakSep 8, 2024
It doesn’t take much to write or perform an explosive scene of unmitigated furor. It does to balance it with the empathy to know it comes from a place of fear. The acting is a huge piece to that puzzle because none of this works without believing Almut and Tobias are soulmates. Read full review
82
TheWrapSteve PondSep 7, 2024
In a movie whose setup that almost inevitably leads to rampant sentimentality, Pugh and Garfield are enormously charming actors who are also skilled at undercutting their own charm; they commit to the sentiment without yielding to it, making We Live in Time a truly charming and surprisingly rich film. Read full review
80
EmpireAmon WarmannJan 2, 2025
Pugh and Garfield are a dynamite duo in this likably earnest, satisfyingly complicated love story. Worthy of your time, and your tears. Read full review
80
Time OutHelen O'HaraDec 13, 2024
It feels real, and honest, in a way that too few romantic films manage. Read full review
80
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Johanna SchnellerOct 18, 2024
Pugh’s fierceness and Garfield’s ready access to emotion make them a good match; the dialogue is witty and it’s a pleasure just to listen to them talk. Most importantly, everyone involved is serious about and committed to and yes, in love with the story. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredFrancisca TinocoOct 15, 2024
We Live in Time packs an emotional, surprisingly meditative punch in the form of one of the most beautiful romance films of the last decade. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearOct 11, 2024
We Live in Time is an actor’s movie, by necessity if not always by design. You know where the destination ends before the movie’s even begun. Pugh and Garfield make the endgame worth the journey, no matter where you place it. Read full review
80
IGNAlyssa MoraOct 11, 2024
While the bones of the story itself may not be particularly groundbreaking, what’s brilliant about We Live in Time is that it encourages us to find wonder in the everyday. Read full review
80
SlashfilmWitney SeiboldOct 10, 2024
Crowley may be telling a melodramatic story, but he studiously avoids sentimentality. Read full review
80
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 9, 2024
There is also its nimble humor, its refreshingly frank and positive depictions of sex—perhaps we are finally turning a corner on that whole issue. And there is the remarkable Pugh, doing so much to deeply humanize a story of pretty people in pretty places and ever so slightly contrived circumstances. Read full review
80
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiSep 7, 2024
We Live in Time gives us what we’ve been missing from romantic dramas. It might be a tearjerker, but there’s a sense of peace watching the couple live as full a life as they can together. And really, that’s all we can ask for while we’re still here. Read full review
80
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 7, 2024
It’s such a joy to watch two such assured and natural performers allowed the room to exercise both movie star and actor muscles as well as showcase their ease with both comedy and drama. Read full review
80
ColliderRoss BonaimeSep 7, 2024
With Pugh and Garfield leading this tremendous love story, We Live in Time becomes one of the best movie romances in years, and proves that few filmmakers can present the power of love quite like Crowley can. Read full review
75
Original-CinKaren GordonOct 18, 2024
It hits a lot of the right notes, but, overall the film suffers from a predictable plot. But Pugh and Garfield’s nuanced performances give the film empathy and depth that pulls us through. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrOct 10, 2024
It is charming and silly and sometimes cringey — other people’s relationships always are— and in the end it works exceedingly well because of them and their wonderful chemistry. Read full review
75
The PlaylistAnkit JhunjhunwalaSep 7, 2024
Crowley and Payne owe a considerable debt to Pugh and Garfield. But for their presence, the film might not have been able to rise above its borderline twee mundanity. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 7, 2024
We Live in Time is a film that looks you in the eyes as it tugs on your heartstrings, a movie that would almost certainly fall apart with lesser performers to make this kind of shallow script feel organic. Luckily, this one has Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. Read full review
70
LooperAudrey FoxSep 20, 2024
Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield are both preternaturally likable, and it's their performances and chemistry together that helps We Live in Time stand out from the crowd. Even so, the film's gimmick and its two glittering stars aren't quite enough to elevate this into must-watch territory. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 21, 2024
Those yearning to make use of a small package of tissues may be willing to overlook the movie’s deficiencies but I can’t help but wonder whether a conventional telling of the same story might have been more effective in the long run. Read full review
63
USA TodayBrian TruittOct 17, 2024
A film like, say, all-time weepie cancer tale “Love Story” crescendos toward the eventual waterworks – while it may leave some looking for a tissue, “We Live in Time” ends up thwarting rather than boosting that catharsis. Read full review
63
ObserverOliver JonesOct 15, 2024
By crisscrossing time frames, Crowley, working from a script by playwright Nick Payne, halts his film’s momentum and lessens the overall impact of the central romance. Read full review
60
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyJan 9, 2025
All emotions here are predetermined. The point is that we’ve simply been given licence to feel. Read full review
60
Little White LiesMark AschJan 7, 2025
This is simply a generic and brutally efficient tearjerker – like its title, it aspires to archetypal grandeur and lands somewhere blander. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJan 7, 2025
We Live in Time is let down by the jarring product placement (take a bow, Weetabix and Jaffa Cakes) and by the aggressively anodyne score, which sounds like the kind of reassuring, hand-holding mulch that might be played in a dentist’s waiting room. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 3, 2025
I felt that the film was evasive about the uncinematic reality of what serious illness and death actually looks like, and the final choice is too simplistic. But the film is still something to see, if only for the marvellous performances from Garfield and Pugh. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeJan 2, 2025
Many will be won over by the emotional surge of the closing moments. Others will wonder if there is a word for a manipulative drama that fails to satisfactorily manipulate. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 7, 2024
It’s a klutzy way to tell a story, but Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias’ memories will have become our memories, and the sequence hardly matters. Read full review
56
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerOct 11, 2024
For a touch-and-go exercise in hoping the audience will fill in not just the narrative blanks but the emotional ones, there’s We Live in Time. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 25, 2024
Such movies are manipulative by nature and we embrace them for that. Here, that’s more obvious and heavy-handed, and the manipulation tends to spare us tears — and laughs — when the tears are entirely the point. Read full review
50
Washington PostTy BurrOct 17, 2024
In any event, Pugh uses her expressive eyes and ardent, intelligent sensibilities to paint a touching if underdeveloped portrait of an artist desperate to leave her mark before being rushed too soon from the show. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 11, 2024
We need good melodramas, especially ones with elements of romantic comedy built in, and I wanted to love We Live in Time. But its cracks kept coming to the fore. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesGlenn WhippOct 10, 2024
Pugh gives Alma an edgy unpredictability that almost makes you believe some of the implausible things she does. And the expressive Garfield can convey water-eyed empathy so deftly that you know Tobias would be laid low if Almut so much as stubbed her toe on the leg of a coffee table. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 10, 2024
Almut’s ambitions give her spark and grit, and they make the character appealingly contemporary, as does Pugh’s vibrancy and emotionally charged performance. The actress handles the shifting periods and deepening drama adroitly, even when the filmmakers begin selling out her character. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineDerek SmithOct 10, 2024
John Crowley’s film blunts the force of the naturalistic performances by Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as it shifts around the timeline of the story with little rhyme, reason, or rhythm. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 7, 2024
Garfield and Pugh have such instant chemistry that one never doubts why their characters would end up together. But ultimately, We Live In Time views Tobias and Almut as abstractions, and by jumping back and forth in time, it never makes them very present. Read full review
50
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 7, 2024
Pulling on the heartstrings with tug-of-war-grade might, it’s a carpe diem fable that elicits more exasperated eye rolls than tears or laughs. Read full review
40
iFrancesca SteeleJan 3, 2025
It is, indeed, exceedingly tasteful, but without any narrative oomph, and some problematic characterisation to boot. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalZachary BarnesOct 10, 2024
A mawkish core remains, though, and the resulting disjuncture—between the film’s indie style and its sludgy sentimentality—makes the whole effort feel phony. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 7, 2024
I never really bought the onscreen relationship in We Live in Time, in part because I could constantly feel the movie trying too hard. The love story is syrupy, and the tragedy even more syrupy. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonOct 17, 2024
Perhaps Crowley was trying to deconstruct the clichés we’ve become accustomed to in romantic movies since the old studio system started churning them out. But even that explanation fails to hold water as “We Live in Time” repeatedly falls back on those dated, tired tropes. Read full review
33
The A.V. ClubBrianna ZiglerOct 10, 2024
We Live In Time’s worst sin is making its thin characters so damn boring. They’re so likable and sweet, even their flaws are forgivable. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 15, 2024
I can’t imagine who would want to make a movie like this, much less who would want to watch this. It says nothing real about life or death, and it’s not as though it’s telling us something we don’t already know. Read full review
20
The TelegraphRobbie CollinOct 25, 2024
The amatory mechanisms here are so basic they make 1970’s Love Story look like Wuthering Heights, but at least Love Story had the courage to wring every last drop of pathos from its tragic-romance premise. Read full review
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