Metacritic reviews

After seeing Awakenings, I read it, to know more about what happened in that Bronx hospital. What both the movie and the book convey is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of their doctors, as in a small way they reexperienced what it means to be born, to open your eyes and discover to your astonishment that "you" are alive.

Awakenings, directed by Penny Marshall, is a curiously engaging, genuinely haunting movie that rises above some dubious handicapped jokes and strange casting decisions to be truly special. [11 Jan 1991, p.5]

Director Penny Marshall's choreography encompasses emotional as well as physical ebbs and flows. Awakenings lives up to its title. [11 Jan 1991]

Awakenings is a troubling film, but it's also a courageous one that dares to tackle a difficult subject with sensitivity and honesty. [20 Dec 1990, p.E1]

Marshall elicits performances from Williams and De Niro that are exceptional. Awakenings is a small, simple movie about a large, complex issue, the waste of human opportunity. [19 Dec 1990, p.C1]

As well-meaning and "sensitive" as Awakenings is, it never rises much above the level of a grade-A tear-jerker. It achieves most of its effects by tenderizing raw material into something marshmallowy. [20 Dec 1990, p.1]

Awakenings falls into the of traps of sentimentality and audience-pandering. It makes you laugh, cry, and marvel. But it also simplifies and falsifies all kinds of issues, from the intricacies of medical care to the realities of inner-city hospital funding. [7 Feb 1991]

Knee-jerk tears aside, there's nothing tremendously special. It's very watchable, but it doesn't stand out. Which is not to say the film is badly done; it's just decently done.

Awakenings both sentimentalizes its story and oversimplifies it beyond recognition. At no point does the film express more than one idea at a time. And the idea expressed, more often than not, is as banal as the reality was bizarre.

Awakenings is a film that unquestionably succeeds on its own terms, though those terms are deeply suspect. It is a canny piece of false art, one that consistently swaps meaning for superficial effect. [20 Dec 1990, p.1]