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Janice Page, Boston Globe: Not a film to rival To Live, but a fine little amuse-bouche to keep your appetite whetted. Read more
Marta Barber, Miami Herald: Metaphors abound, but it is easy to take this film at face value and enjoy its slightly humorous and tender story. Read more
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: This is a film, like City Lights, that blends darkness and light, laughter and tears -- expertly and with love. Read more
A.O. Scott, New York Times: Wise, gentle and sad. Read more
Jan Stuart, Newsday: Sentimentality and the comedy of deception conspire to enchanting effect. Read more
John Hartl, Seattle Times: Occasionally funny and consistently odd, and it works reasonably well as a star vehicle for Zhao. Read more
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Simultaneously poignant, engagingly funny and bittersweet, it mixes its elements in a way that is completely its own. Read more
Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: Gently humorous and touching. Read more
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The movie is best when it's deadpan, before it veers from O. Henry irony to Chaplin pathos. Read more
Jennie Punter, Globe and Mail: A tale of unlikely friendship in an increasingly uncaring world. Read more
Tom Sime, Dallas Morning News: The performances are winning all around. And the comic, slice-of-life feel is charming, but takes a hike as the film progresses. Read more
Mark Olsen, L.A. Weekly: Anchored by two fine performances, this bittersweet comedy about second chances just might signal a new beginning for the director as well. Read more
Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: Read more
Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Endows humanist cinema with a heroic moral dimension. Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: To me, it sounds like a cruel deception carried out by men of marginal intelligence, with reactionary ideas about women and a total lack of empathy. Read more
Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: One feels the dimming of a certain ambition, but in its place a sweetness, clarity and emotional openness that recalls the classics of early Italian neorealism. Read more
Malene Arpe, Toronto Star: A bittersweet contemporary comedy about benevolent deception, which, while it may not rival the filmmaker's period pieces, is still very much worth seeing. Read more
Mike D'Angelo, Time Out: A mawkish, implausible platonic romance that makes Chaplin's City Lights seem dispassionate by comparison. Read more
Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: That Zhang would make such a strainingly cute film -- with a blind orphan at its center, no less -- indicates where his ambitions have wandered. Read more
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: An engaging and specific portrait of a culture in transition, even as it evokes humanity's most universal and timeless values. Read more
Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: The film's maudlin focus on the young woman's infirmity and her naive dreams play like the worst kind of Hollywood heart-string plucking. Read more