Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
If only Demme had shot a scene of Ricki stubbing out a joint on a "Cathy" comic strip.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Diablo Cody's dispiriting screenplay is all about everyone coming to love Ricki, faults and all, and that is just not convincingly done.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Even with its well-observed moments, the movie's nonmusical interactions, whether reaching for laughs or poignancy, too often feel flat and forced.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The skilled veteran Demme alternates dysfunctional family confrontations with easy comedy, expertly peppering in just the right rock tunes along the way. It's hard not to like Ricki, but the film makes no excuses for her actions.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
An assemblage of almost-characters in an almost-story, resulting in a very disappointing almost-movie.

Name : Tina Hassannia / Alias : Globe and Mail
Regardless of its flimsy emotional interior, Ricki is a worthy addition in this year's growing canon of strong female-centred films, and it would be wise to remember Streep's stunning performance come awards season.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Despite Streep's best efforts, Ricki seems more of a contrivance than a flesh-and-blood character.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Worth watching, and rocking to.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Creating a film with solid drama beside good humor is tough. It's harder still to balance them against a complicated character so they don't sprawl lopsided, and to send the audience home feeling satisfied.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film, which Diablo Cody wrote and Jonathan Demme directed, is a work of bulk-size bogusness. Barely a single scene is convincing.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
This is a shaggy, easily distractible film that consistently defies expectations to both charming and baffling effect.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
The film roars to life too intermittently.but, sadly, too much of Ricki and the Flash is just the same old song.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
While there are some bright notes in Cody's writing, the situations feel a little tired, and the characters unexplored.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ricki raises smart questions about why a mother's musical ambitions are so much more selfish than, say, seven-time dad Mick Jagger's, and even the shamelessly corny sing-along finale wrings a few real tears out.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The result is cold porridge.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
There are fleeting moments of real fun. Still, it's hard not to wonder why so much in the movie went so wrong.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Ultimately, spending time with these people is pleasant, lived-in, honest and even thought-provoking. And when the dialogue stops, there's a fun, golden not-too-oldies live music soundtrack to hum along with too.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
As in Demme's best early work (Handle With Care, Melvin & Howard), there is both an affection for a uniquely American type of oddball and a clear-eyed sense of their foibles.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Director Jonathan Demme, with music in his DNA, offers a heartfelt salute to those who play the underside of rock & roll because, well, they have to. Too bad the rest of the movie is dime-a-dozen family soap opera.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
The story here, like a lot of bar bands, goes loud to cover up mediocrity. When Streep sings, though, so does the film.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Demme has already made a messed-up family matrimonial get-together way better than this, with a way better screenplay than the one Juno writer Cody has tossed off.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
All good protagonists are contradictory tangles of experience and disappointment, but Cody is so tentative in her approach, nothing gathers steam or sticks in emotional terms.

Name : Susanna Schrobsdorff / Alias : TIME Magazine
Streep's latest mom role, as Ricki Rendazzo in Ricki and the Flash, has a light, Mamma Mia! vibe, but it still hits all those hot buttons.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Streep's performance, like lightning, jolts everything.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
The movie itself seems equally divided between the sensibilities of hyperverbal writer Diablo Cody and music-centric director Jonathan Demme, and ends up falling into a muddy gap between the two.

Name : Patrick Dunn / Alias : Detroit News
Streep may have just been looking for some variety and an Oscar. But why is Demme, the great director of "The Silence of the Lambs," wasting his time on this?

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Quite a few filmgoers lament the shortage of movies for adults. "Ricki and the Flash" goes against that trend with rock 'n' roll attitude.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Ricki and the Flash" feels like "Stella Dallas" as remade by Jean Renoir - it's a humanist suburban fable.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Streep and Springfield make a surprisingly sweet pair of retirement-age rockers, but the scattered story line keeps losing the beat.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
What might have been must be better than what's here, because what's here isn't much.

Name : Spencer Kornhaber / Alias : The Atlantic
Just when the story beats start to feel unbearably obvious, the film changes keys, becoming less family dramedy than a concert film.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Streep finds her way to the soul of several songs. There's devastating connection and tears in these moments: delicate gratitude in "Drift Away," nothing short of maternal redemption in a roaring version of Springsteen's "My Love Will Not Let You Down."

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Ricki and the Flash swerves near stereotypes and swerves away at every turn.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The screenplay doesn't lack for memorable zingers, and thanks to Cody's script and Streep's performance, Ricki emerges as a complex, self-contradictory person (even if most of the supporting characters don't).

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
If only Streep would have put down the microphone and let Springfield sing "Jessie's Girl," "Ricki and the Flash" might have had half a chance.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The movie is mature in the way it handles the regrets of absentee parents and the ways in which their children relate to them. There's a little Hollywood artifice here but not so much that the emotions feel inauthentic.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
It's a crowd-pleaser every bit as calculated and earnestly defanged as a Golden Oldies bus-and-truck tour. It's fun while it lasts, even if the Bic lighters stay safely pocketed at the end of the show.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
A warmth radiates through Ricki and the Flash like a song sung true. A film that adores its characters this much is sure to be adored in kind.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"Ricki and the Flash" seems like a squandered opportunity for this humane, curious and liberal-minded filmmaker to reflect on some uncomfortable realities. This isn't really rock 'n' roll. It's easy listening.

Name : Dave Kehr / Alias : Chicago Reader
Griffith's later films are unquestionably superior. But here, in a very real sense, is where the movies began, both as an art and as a business.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
More than a movie about a slave rebellion, it's about the difficulty of reconciling the great moral chasms between thought, vision, and deed.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
Problematically, Birth of a Nation wasn't just a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art - in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Debuting writer-director Nate Parker stars in this searingly impressive account of the Nat Turner slave rebellion.

Name : Variety Staff / Alias : Variety
Birth of a Nation is a great epoch in picture making; it's great for pictures and it's great for the name and fame of David Wark Griffith. When a man like Griffith in a new field can do what he has done, he may as well be hailed while he is living.

Name : Alison Willmore / Alias : BuzzFeed News
Turner deserves this treatment; he deserves a film that doesn't soften the era or apologize in any way for his anger; and he deserves a salute for making it happen.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The film offers up more than enough in terms of intelligence, insight, historical research and religious nuance as to not at all be considered a missed opportunity .