Critic Reviews

• Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

  Well meaning but less than riveting in its execution, this documentary is far better suited for public television exposure than theatrical release.

• Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

  A dispiriting public service announcement.

• Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

  Narrated by Meryl Streep, the film thoughtfully lays out the facts while highlighting various programs that aim to eliminate economic incentives to exploit children, and to return them to their families, enabling them to go to school.

• Ronnie Scheib, Variety

  In its reliance on emotionally loaded voiceover and its disconcertingly direct appeals for support, Len Morris' old-fashioned docu seems more designed for fund-raising pitches than theatrical release.

• Jack Mathews, New York Daily News

  Meryl Streep narrates this global update on child-labor abuses with all the enthusiasm and alarm of someone reading 'The Pet Goat' to a classroom of second-graders.

• Lou Lumenick, New York Post

  It remains for a tougher documentary to more forcefully trace exactly who benefits from this shameful practice -- multinational corporations and consumers who don't ask enough questions.

• Maria Garcia, Film Journal International

  The result is an infomercial rather than a film.

• Tim Cogshell, Boxoffice Magazine

  A gripping indictment of the effective enslavement of children all over the world.

• Jeff Vice, Deseret News, Salt Lake City

  Morris continually drives home the same point, about the inhumanity and cruelty of child labor. Needless to say, it gets redundant and starts feeling wearying and monotonous.

• Sean Means, Salt Lake Tribune

  A blunt but effective guilt trip..., more a political statement than a personal one.

• , E! Online

  At times, Stolen feels more like a fundraising tool than a theatrical release, but it's still an effective call to action, emphasizing the need for social responsibility by consumers, lawmakers and corporations.

• Andy Klein, Los Angeles CityBeat

  ...as utilitarian a piece of filmmaking as can be imagined

• Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly

  Stolen Childhoods is a serious work of analysis, rooting the resistance to reform in Third World government corruption and Western profiteering.

• Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice

  Makes the point that we are all one family and the degradation and slavery of one child working in horrible conditions diminishes us all.

Read all 14 critic reviews