Critic Reviews

• Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

  Resentments, pregnancies, cancer, spousal abuse and the struggle of a recovering alcoholic all come and go on cue.

• Connie Ogle, Miami Herald

  These Fitzgeralds are loud, selfish and often maddening, but they're a loving group, and you wouldn't mind spending more time with them.

• Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

  Burns remains an agreeable presence throughout, and the emotions mostly ring true, even if the comic elements feel overly broad and individual episodes are hit-and-miss.

• Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

  A holiday-themed piece shot through with humor and heartbreak. No bull. And low on sappy.

• Sara Stewart, New York Post

  Too much of the film is taken up by creaky plot devices and one sibling vowing to track down and talk to another one to resolve a problem.

• Stephen Holden, New York Times

  Manages the considerable feat of interweaving the personal dramas of nine members of a boisterous Irish-American clan into a coherent mosaic with a streamlined narrative drive.

• MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher

  [A]chingly lovely... so full of bittersweet melancholy and yet so fixedly hopeful without ever having to touch on the sentimental...

• Todd Jorgenson, Cinemalogue.com

  The ensemble cast is mostly agreeable, but the script eventually bogs down amid too many characters and too many contrivances.

• Susan Granger, SSG Syndicate

  The dysfunctional silbling-squabbling delivers diluted holiday cheer.

• Annlee Ellingson, Paste Magazine

  Burns' latest demonstrates the workmanlike skill with which he's produced a new relationship drama every one or two years.

• Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com

  A fertile battlefield of sibling discontent and parental resentment, creating a prickly but inviting familial atmosphere that offers enough variation in woe to ease the script out of its occasional dalliance with clumsy melodrama.

• Marsha McCreadie, Film Journal International

  Burns gives a rare picture of another borough, showing the working-class environment he grew up in, and eulogizes: Queens, and even the beaches of Long Island when not in high season.

Read all 12 critic reviews