Metacritic reviews

An exquisite, ecstatic film, crude in its characterizations and plotting, yes, but extraordinary in its capacity for elation and its hard-earned sentimentality.

Bell explodes onscreen in a performance that cuts to the heart without sham tearjerking. Look for Billy to blast off.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a purer expression of rapture in a film this year than the one that opens Billy Elliot.

A triumph that deserves a broad audience.

Bell is utterly persuasive as the boy literally yearning to leap beyond the oppressively apparent confines of his world.

Director Stephen Daldry gets it right.

An uplifting, crowd-pleasing film in the tradition of "The Full Monty" that could easily win Oscar nominations for both its 11-year-old star, Jamie Bell, and first-time director, Stephen Daldry.

Compared to manipulative tearjerkers like "Pay It Forward" or "Men of Honor," Billy Elliot is a model of restraint, one that earns its warmth the hard way -- by making us care about the people who are going through familiar steps.

There's too much miserable reality and not a lot of transcendent dance, and the director, Stephen Daldry, doesn't cover the action from enough angles.

In its determination to overdo sure-fire material, Billy Elliot becomes as impossible to wholeheartedly embrace as it is to completely reject.