Critic Reviews

• Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

  A strong cast can't save "Virginia," Dustin Lance Black's film about a schizophrenic mom in a small Virginia beach town.

• Rick Groen, Globe and Mail

  It's all rather wacky and hard to follow or fathom, although maybe that's attributable to Virginia's schizophrenia veering off on its delusional phase.

• Lou Lumenick, New York Post

  A bravely demented semi-autobiographical drama that never lives up to the potential of its high-powered cast.

• Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times

  Set among the hangdog hicks and arcade attractions of a fictional Southern beach town, the loosely autobiographical movie aims for roller-coaster passion but only flatlines.

• Stephen Holden, New York Times

  There are so many moving parts spinning in so many directions that this movie's purpose is inscrutable and the noise of its grinding parts distracting.

• Scott Tobias, NPR

  The result here is the type of calamity that should be more compelling than it is.

• Fred Topel, CraveOnline

  Sensitive about characters exploring this culture and the conversations they must have trying to figure out relationships. It's not ridiculing or condescending at all.

• Sam Adams, AV Club

  Black seems to be aiming for some sort of loopy fantasia, a tragic fable about struggling with difference in the small-town South, but he's got more half-finished ideas than he can handle.

• Chris Bumbray, JoBlo's Movie Emporium

  A trainwreck.

• Billy Tatum, Paste Magazine

  Shotguns so many elements onto the screen that it's difficult to know which to follow, cheer for or hate.

• Liz Braun, Jam! Movies

  The film concerns a woman with psychological problems, her married lover and her 16-year-old son, but the tale wobbles between humour and drama in a disconcerting fashion.

• Alison Willmore, Movieline

  Virginia is so scattershot it feels like it's a vehicle created to loosely hold a group of ideas rather than function as anything coherent.

• Prairie Miller, NewsBlaze

  Religious zealots and nonbelievers alike run amok, as discussions abound about post-mortem polygamy and romance materializing in outer space in the afterlife This, as erotic police handcuffs and Mitt Romney intimations kick in. Sex, Lies and Mormons.

Read all 13 critic reviews