- 10
...a truly mature look at love lost. While it is often an overused cliché by stuffy critics, this truly is a movie for grown-ups.
—Luke Y. Thompson E!
- 10
...lushly touching and gorgeously told.
—Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly
- 10
...a remarkable, utterly wrenching film.
—Nathan Rabin Onion AV Club
- 9
...extraordinary...
—Andrew O'Hehir Salon
- 8
...a viscerally raw and lyrically stylized reverie for first love lost.
—Paul Brunick Slant Magazine
- 8
...a meaty, strongly realized dramatic work of considerable accomplishment.
—Todd McCarthy Variety
- 8
...a smooth, dark heartbreaker.
—Kyle Smith New York Post
- 8
This wrenching story of a marriage that rides a roller coaster for six tumultuous years is not to be missed.
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 8
...a film that watches pretty well...
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 7
...truck me as most affecting precisely when it chooses to hang out, in a fly-on-the-wall way, with these ordinary people.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 6
Ultimately, the heavy-handed and annoyingly obvious aesthetic wears thin.
—Duane Byrge Hollywood Reporter
- 6
Even when transparently plumbing for depth, Cianfrance's film is frustratingly surface-bound in ways that reflect, if not out-and-out misogyny, then at least a lack of interest in imbuing his female character with the rich interior life and complicated morality he gives his male lead.
—Karina Longworth Village Voice
- 6
Blue Valentine is an easy film to appreciate but a difficult one to embrace and an even harder one to recommend.
—Sean O'Connell filmcritic.com
- 6
...meandering dialogue can be difficult to control, and at times the film feels as if the director has stepped away from the vehicle, leaving it to veer off the path. Still, it's an experiment that works more than it fails by giving Gosling and Williams both the motive and the means to create something extraordinary, a valentine that actually says something true about being in love.
—Betsy Sharkey Los Angeles Times
- 5
The film's time structure is splintered into shards of past and present, which is probably just as well ? a strictly narrative chronology would make this wallow seem even sloggier.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 5
...looks like a grim, dirty-realist, festival-circuit version of (and sequel to) Knocked Up.
—A. O. Scott New York Times