93% The Sapphires

All Critics (123) | Top Critics (28) | Fresh (114) | Rotten (9)

The harmonies they strike in this reality-inspired charmer are sweetly sublime.

You could drive an Abrams tank through the film's plot holes, but you'll likely be too busy enjoying yourself to bother.

"The Sapphires" feels like a movie you've already seen, but it's nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable, like a pop song that's no less infectious when you know every word.

"The Sapphires" sparkles with sass and Motown soul.

Sapphires is hardly a cinematic diamond mine. But this Commitments-style mashup of music and melodrama manages to entertain without demanding too much of its audience.

By-the-numbers in every sense of the word, the film tracks a tried-and-true sort of triumph while featuring renditions of soul classics so bursting with energy and joy you won't care that the originality meter is leaning on empty.

Even when it seems contrived The Sapphires is a feel-good movie in the most positive meaning of that term, thanks to the Motown music and O'Dowd's cheeky charm. Like the Temptations, I loved every sugar pie, honey bunch moment. I can't help myself.

Unfortunately, it has been turned into a routine and uninspiring movie, following a tired, old formula the entire way.

A surefire crowdpleaser with all the ingredients for the type of little-movie-that-could sleeper success that Harvey Weinstein has nurtured in years and award seasons past.

You've seen this story before, but never pulled off with so much joie de vivre.

They can put a song across just like the Dreamgirls. What's not to like?

Exuberant but fairly formulaic.

Doesn't always mix its anti-prejudice message and its feel-good nostalgia with complete smoothness. But despite some ragged edges it provides a reasonably good time.

Director Wayne Blair -- another veteran of the stage show -- finds his footing during the film's many musical numbers.

Despite the prosaic plot and reserved approach taken by Blair, Briggs, and Thompson, it's tough to get cynical about such a warmhearted picture that strives to tell so uplifting a story.

A movie with enough melody and camaraderie to cover up its lack of originality.

Draining most of the blood, sweat and tears from a true story, this music-minded movie capably covers a song we've heard a hundred times before.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_sapphires_2012/

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