60
Metascore
20 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75New York Daily NewsStephen WhittyNew York Daily NewsStephen WhittyDirector de Aranoa keeps things moving, though, with a firm sense of pace and a rough, punk-edged soundtrack.
- 70Screen DailyLee MarshallScreen DailyLee MarshallThe humanity of the enterprise, hovering between sympathy and ironic detachment, keeps the script on course, delivering a story that for all its motley-band-of-brothers clichés feels as authentic as many more pious takes on the Bosnian conflict.
- 70Village VoiceAmy NicholsonVillage VoiceAmy NicholsonA Perfect Day is a wry salute to the hard-drinking, eye-rolling aid workers of the world, men and women whose high ideals get crushed by global bureaucracy and local recalcitrance.
- 63Slant MagazineClayton DillardSlant MagazineClayton DillardThe film finally seems conspicuously at odds with itself, neither funny nor impassioned enough to pass as an accomplished vision of transnational welfare.
- 60The GuardianHenry BarnesThe GuardianHenry BarnesInconsistency is A Perfect Day’s biggest problem. The script is scalpel sharp in some places, flabby as the well-blocker in others.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyWhile it's uneven, A Perfect Day builds to a nice melancholy conclusion. It underscores with gentle strokes the frustration and disillusionment of self-sacrificing workers confronted on a daily basis with feelings of futility in the face of corruption and compromise.
- 60The TelegraphRobbie CollinThe TelegraphRobbie CollinWhen the film gets going, it’s hard not to be bustled along with it, thanks mostly to León de Aranoa’s talent for punchy comic dialogue – doubly impressive, given this is his first English-language picture – and the plot’s habit of thwarting your expectations as to where the most morally upstanding course of action might lead.
- 60VarietyJustin ChangVarietyJustin ChangBy the end, thanks to Leon de Aranoa’s steady direction and the actors’ slow-building character work, “A Perfect Day” manages to coalesce into a reasonably tough-minded, compassionate vision of the difficulties and rewards of trying to do the right thing in an intractable situation, though the film has to overcome more than a few flat, indolent stretches to get there.
- 60The New YorkerAnthony LaneThe New YorkerAnthony LaneSo acclimatized are we to action flicks, and to onscreen conflicts teeming with soldiers, that it’s refreshing to find a film that concentrates on hanging back and reversing out of harm’s way.
- 50The PlaylistOliver LytteltonThe PlaylistOliver LytteltonThe humor is there on paper, but it ends up emptily quippy and gag-filled rather deriving the jokes from situations and character, and only one in three end up landing, mostly thanks to Robbins.