Metacritic reviews

This is the kind of movie Frank Capra might have directed, and James Stewart might have starred in - a movie about dreams.

Despite a few wrong turns early on, the movie gathers graceful momentum and heads straight to the warm heart of the book - that fond spot located just on the safe side of sentimentality, a feel- good place that doesn't leave any feel-stupid fallout.

As shrewd and accomplished as the movie is, there's still something uncomfortably manipulative about it... It doesn't explore its primal theme as much as it exploits it, tapping into the automatic, nearly universal power of guilt and regret. [21 Apr 1989, Friday, p.A]

Imagine: a pseudo-intellectual baseball fantasy loaded up, like a spitter, with seductive sentiment. You can distrust the mix, but still like the movie - and I do. [21 Apr 1989, Life, p.D1]

If you're in the right mood this movie will bring a tear to your eye. If you're not you're probably already watching "Reservoir Dogs".

Ultimately, the film relies too heavily on consensual acceptance of baseball iconography as some kind of symbolic shorthand for all kinds of American values. These days, most of us prefer the NBA.

In spite of a script hobbled with cloying aphorisms and shameless sentimentality, Field of Dreams sustains a dreamy mood in which the idea of baseball is distilled to its purest essence.

Well-made treacle.

The movie may steal a base here and there, but there are no homers.

To be honest, I started hearing things, too. Just when Jones was delivering an inexcusably sappy speech about baseball being "a symbol of all that was once good in America," I heard the words "If he keeps talking, I'm walking."