Metacritic reviews

Family life rarely is portrayed with such warmth, clarity and vibrancy as in In America.

The acting is uniformly superb.

Warm and borderline sentimental...also brimming with true and privileged moments, as well as an optimism in the face of tough circumstances that serves as a corrective to some of the more fashionably grim modern accounts of similar stories.

Emma Bolger is -- no other word for it -- magical in the role...In her way she encapsulates In America's virtues. It's a realistic movie, but one that's always aware that transformative hope may be just around the corner.

While In America doesn't convince as an immigrants-in-the-U.S. story, it resonates powerfully as a portrait of grief and reconciliation.

Like a kid playing make-believe, In America is blithely confident of its own contrivances; it only benefits from a certain unselfconscious naïveté. And as with a misjudged Christmas gift or a mawkish sympathy card from a kindly relative, one can hardly doubt its uplifting intentions.

A recklessly emotional film that is so committed to feelings it occasionally overflows its banks. Which may be a little messy, but it's a lot more welcome than the drought-stricken alternatives.

Definitely designed to tug on its audience's heartstrings, a task at which it completely succeeds, In America is ultimately a solid, if unspectacular family film.

Fortunately, there are more than enough moments when the heavy-handedness gives way to the sheer bliss of ordinary magic.

In short, the Sheridan of In America wants us to pity his characters for the rough ride that they endure, yet at the same time he traps them inside a bubble of the picturesque and the outlandish. Even if you like this movie, you have to ask: What has it done to deserve its title? [1 December 2003, p. 118]