Critic Reviews

• Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle

  It's Michael Moore without the truculence, PBS without the pretension, CNN without the commercial grandstanding.

• Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

  Comes off mostly like a hybrid of retro-style educational film and late-night infomercial.

• Nathan Lee, New York Times

  The Beautiful Truth is a documentary about contemporary health hazards and alternative treatments.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  There may be truth in what Kroschel says, but you won't find it in this pedantic film, which has all the veracity of a late-night TV infomercial.

• Drew Toal, Time Out New York

  The director's suggestion that big pharmaceutical companies have no interest in actually curing cancer is credible, but the film itself unfortunately makes Kroschel's beliefs come off like just so much hippie propaganda.

• Ronnie Scheib, Variety

  While docu's claims and criticism yield nothing especially new, the form of their exposition seems singularly ingenious, stylistically falling somewhere between a 1950s educational film and some sort of Norman Rockwellian infomercial.

• James Plath, Movie Metropolis

  Caveat emptor really applies here, because your health is at stake. Do your research, do your homework, and use common sense.

• Tim Grierson, L.A. Weekly

  [A] condescending, manipulative film.

• Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice

  A powerful documentary that offers both a chilling expose of the toxins in our food that are causing so much disease and an affirmation of a plant-oriented therapy that has cured cancer in many individuals.

• Eric Monder, Film Journal International

  An unusual and sobering documentary which turns conventional wisdom about health matters on its head.

• Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

  Boring like a one-note school lecture but nevertheless is credible as it makes its case about the need for alternative medicines.

• Matthew Nestel, Boxoffice Magazine

  The picture carries an element of nostalgia and yet thunders down too hard with a lot of one-sided perspectives.

• Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

  The end result not only constitutes an uncomfortable--dare I say, inorganic--collusion of fact and fiction but also suggests we're being indoctrinated into a cult.

• Harvey S. Karten, Compuserve

  Quack or saint? Dr. Gerson, whose work in allegedly curing cancer by alternative means, is highlighted in a light, even convincing way.

Read all 14 critic reviews