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Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News: [Lacks] psychological depth and emotional resonance. Read more
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: An often painful, surprisingly illuminating and emotionally complex portrait of a woman who is ultimately as mysterious as her art. Read more
Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: Fails to reflect the enormous complexity of the tumultuous relationship between Ted Hughes and Plath. Read more
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Falls short of its goal. Read more
Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune: It's a dreary movie about a dreary character, offering little insight into her poetry or the mental illness that ultimately conquered her. Read more
A.O. Scott, New York Times: It is Plath's writing that represents ... her surest claim on our attention. The makers of Sylvia may, to some degree, have neglected this brilliant, unsettling and tragically foreshortened body of work, but they have not betrayed it. Read more
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: The results are mixed, but noble. Read more
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Aside from Paltrow's performance, Sylvia is neither a film so spectacular it shouldn't be missed nor something so tepid you have to stay away. Read more
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Cinema and poetry aren't merely disparate art forms but largely incompatible ones. Read more
Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: By choosing to make Hughes neither a monster nor sympathetic, the film likely will disappoint Plath acolytes while at the same time falling shy of being a revisionist interpretation of their relationship. Read more
Michael Booth, Denver Post: Odd that a story of two such hot-burning lives as Plath and Hughes could leave us so cold. Read more
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: This is the richest role Paltrow has had since Shakespeare in Love, and she rises to the challenge. Read more
Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: Sylvia's emotional moods should swing from red-hot passion to icy rage. Instead, the movie runs the gamut from tepid to lukewarm. Read more
Ron Stringer, L.A. Weekly: ... more or less take the Hughes line, evoking, through testy dialogue and alternately claustrophobic and idyllic mise en scene, the continuing challenge, and occasional delirium, of marriage to a brilliant manic-depressive. Read more
John Anderson, Newsday: An aerial view, so to speak, of the 20th century's great literary soap. Read more
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Paltrow does this role exceptionally well, but it is underwritten. Read more
Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Offers a wondrously illuminating artistic experience for its ideal audience -- people like me who know a little but not much about the explosive Plath-Hughes fusion of unbridled poetic temperaments in a tauntingly prosaic world. Read more
Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: A prestige picture that doesn't have a lot going for it beyond its serious intentions. Read more
James Berardinelli, ReelViews: A standard melodrama that takes its grim tragedy and encases it in a veneer of self-conscious artsyness. Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: For those who have read the poets and are curious about their lives, Sylvia provides illustrations for the biographies we carry in our minds. Read more
Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: It's a little surprising that Sylvia is so conventional, considering that Plath, whatever you think of her work or her life story, openly defied plenty of the '50s conventions. Read more
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: A coy, cautious film about a frank, fearless writer. Read more
Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: No one expects this to be the feel-good show of the year, but Jeffs' approach is so maudlin that by the end, Plath won't be the only one who's depressed. Read more
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The film does what poets so seldom do themselves -- pursue the middle road and leave the path of excess to the less level-headed. Read more
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Likely to be equally displeasing to Plath enthusiasts as it will be to neophytes, Sylvia suffers from a strange timidity: It only gets close to its subject by rendering her as a kind of melodramatic archetype. Read more
Claudia Puig, USA Today: The lead performances lift the film above melodrama, but they also expose the glaring holes in the screenplay. Read more
Jessica Winter, Village Voice: Ridden with the ankle-spraining lawn divots of the biopic. Read more