Metacritic reviews

Michael Winterbottom's wise and involving Everyday specializes in unscripted-feeling moments that ache of life.

A valuable, meticulously observed and wonderfully acted social-realist feature about a family under pressure.

A slice of raggedy realism with ultra-naturalistic performances.

While the film charts its protagonist's gradual progression toward a renewed sense of agency and freedom, it rarely indulges in lengthy or even linear narrative arcs.

The unusually extended shooting period and Winterbottom’s decision to cast siblings as the kids make for a strangely intimate and powerful depiction of time passing and the peaks and troughs of childhood.

Even with the actors’ laudable work—especially Simm, who finally shakes off the notion that he’s a poor man’s Simon Pegg—there’s not enough going on past the temporal trick to make the humanistic elements pop. Gimmick aside, the title is regrettably apropos.

Movies don’t necessarily have to tell stories, but if narrative is eschewed in favor of an unvarnished portrait of ordinary life, it’s best to cheat a little and make ordinary life feel extraordinary. Michael Winterbottom’s Everyday refuses to stoop to such measures; for better and for worse — mostly for worse — it sticks to the mundane promise of its title.

For all its innovativeness, Everyday has the rhythms and intrigue of a not-very-interesting family’s Christmas letters.

As the years go by and the kids grow — perhaps the only real benefit of Winterbottom’s approach — time begins to run together, making it all too easy for the mind to wander.

An admirable idea in theory proves to be a real slog to sit through in Everyday.