Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
The sort of movie that adjectives like 'frothy' and 'bubbly' were invented for.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
If this Semitic "Strictly Ballroom" and its campy, colorful characters (including a hummus baron!) don't win you over, you may want to check your pulse.

Name : Ronnie Scheib / Alias : Variety
Israeli helmer Eytan Fox's candy-colored musical is an endearingly goofy celebration of the right to be yourself.

Name : Serena Donadoni / Alias : Village Voice
Fox infuses Cupcakes with Ofer's can-do optimism, where the power of song can overcome any personal or professional strife.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
The story soon gives way to characters kvetching about romance and the working world, their sentiments recycled from the director's other movies.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Though the comic confection's clunky moments keep it from achieving souffle delicacy, its bright zingers and seamless fantasy sequences amp the playfulness, and the mostly unforced performances complement the production's cartoonish exuberance.

Name : Andy Webster / Alias : New York Times
This candy-coated confection is so irresistible that you're captivated by its sentiment even as you acknowledge its manipulations.

Name : Dennis Harvey / Alias : Variety
A fine adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner's autobiographical novel about a sexually precocious 1970s adolescence.

Name : Elaine Teng / Alias : The New Republic
It's unlikely to make a box office splash, but it's a startlingly tough, authentic depiction of budding womanhood.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
It dares to show the heroine as something more complicated than a victim. As a result the movie lands somewhere outside the battle lines of contemporary gender politics, which may be why it feels true.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Expect to feel uncomfortable watching Diary of a Teenage Girl, which is precisely the point of this finely etched debut feature by writer/director Marielle Heller.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : TIME Magazine
A movie of (increasingly rare) truly indie sensibility, made by women who are confident about healthy feminine resilience.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
a riveting, resonant first feature from Marielle Heller, with a breakout star performance from Brit actress Bel Powley.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
What a ballsy film - and honest too.

Name : Rebecca Keegan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Big summer action movies can be thrilling, but if you really want to feel your heart pounding out of your chest, try being a 15-year-old girl for 101 minutes.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The first thing to know about The Diary of a Teenage Girl is that young British actress Powley is staggeringly good in it.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The film is harsh but wonderful. It shouldn't be funny, too, but somehow it is, and somehow it's the right kind of funny.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Working from Phoebe Gloeckner's 2002 graphic novel/memoir, Heller gets the shabby glamour and bleached sunshine of '70s San Francisco just right, coloring several scenes with vivid blooms of animation.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
I made it two-thirds of the way through the routine sexual coming-of-age yarn "Diary of a Teenage Girl" when it occurred to me that anything else I could conceivably be doing would be more interesting.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Heller and Powley present a journey that, stripped to its most basic emotional elements, is timeless and universal.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is a breakthrough moment in the culture in that it depicts youthful female sexuality . not just with the unapologetic frankness the boys usually get, but with an awareness of all the places a girl's urges will take her .

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Heller's empathy and, let's be honest, her denial of prurience appears to free Powley from embarrassment. She's seizing this part, not shrinking from it.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A strikingly intimate look at a teenager's sexual life in an outstanding debut film.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
An honest and personal and unblurred examination (even through that druggy blur) of a tricky voyage into womanhood.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
The Diary of a Teenage Gir is the kind of movie that seems a lot more adventuresome than it is.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
For a movie about such fraught topics, sometimes rendered with admirable and non-squeamish explicitness, Diary often eschews melodrama; when the plot turns, it does so abruptly, providing a credible simulation of real-life tumult.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
Heller's debut directorial effort is incisive and universal, despite its very specific and detailed setting.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
Seldom has teenage sexual awakening been covered from a female perspective - with a fickle alternating confidence, self-doubt and voracious appetite - quite so frankly or delicately.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Heller approaches the film in just the right way: As an absolute outgrowth of arty Minnie's own pent-up creativity.

Name : Kristin Tillotson / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is as rewarding as it is squirm-inducing for its honesty, audacity and artful portrayal of adolescence from a girl's point of view.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
The loose quality makes for a bit of a shaggy story with some rough edges, but the bursting, youthful heart throbs with that mix of longing and triumph that is first love.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Writer/director Marielle Heller, in her captivating debut film "The Diary of a Teenage Girl," hits exactly the right tone for a complicated balancing act, and for a film that could very easily have gone wrong.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Thank goodness the irreverent but earnest Diary of a Teenage Girl avoids the moralizing that would usually accompany a film about young people, sex and drugs.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Any woman who survived puberty knows that girlhood is all about obsession - just ask Justin Bieber, One Direction, New Kids on the Block, or the Beatles.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Films often fail to capture the turmoil of being a teenager - but not this one.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The novel is life-specific, but what makes Minnie - on the page and now on the screen - greater than any one girl is how she tells her own story in her own soaringly alive voice.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Frank, poignant and daring, "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" invites you into the mind-set of a sexually adventurous 16-year-old girl - and suggests you leave your judgment at the door.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's work, but it's ultimately rewarding work. It tackles some truths that other movies wouldn't touch, not even with a stick and thick gloves.