Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
The themes are life and death, but the tone stays breezy.

Name : Mark Matousek / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
How refreshing for a film to stare death in the face and find compassion reflected in its gaze.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
It never lapses into mawkishness, but remains clear-eyed and compassionate. It's not coldly clinical; instead, the characters are treated with grace and respect.

Name : Vadim Rizov / Alias : AV Club
The Farewell Party leaves no doubt as to where it stands on the right to die with dignity when facing terminal illness, but it's so clumsily made that it serves only to exasperate.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
For all its talk of death, The Farewell Party, featuring a terrific ensemble cast, is a story about life. Always honest, graceful and funny it explores with deep compassion its characters familial and romantic relationships.

Name : Abby Garnett / Alias : Village Voice
The Farewell Party makes drama out of right-to-die politics and asserts that just about everyone who makes it past a certain age will have to contend with the issue in one way or another.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
A bittersweet, wryly comic, keenly observed look at senescence from Israeli directors Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
It's taking a strong stand on the morality of mercy killing, no doubt, but it also acknowledges the precious glory of life. It's a rare film that can smile while studying suffering.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
I can't recall any film ever making me laugh and cry in complete comic and dramatic balance like "The Farewell Party."

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
For all its sensitivity to the subject, "The Farewell Party" makes a number of tonal missteps .

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The gags in the movie's first half are so unapologetically mordant that I was disappointed to see them dwindle to nothing in the second, as so often happens in stories like this one.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A gentle but pointed work that walks a particular line to create a specific tone, a consistently warm and comic film about an unmistakably serious subject.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The drama falls somewhere on the spectrum between Michael Haneke's devastating Amour and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies, but the result is a film that's frank about death without leaving you cold.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
This is straight-up commercial comedy, low-keyed division, and while it can't hold a candle to recent, dark-comic Israeli achievements such as Joseph Cedar's "Footnote," the actors more than save it.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
The movie has nowhere to go and spends more than two hours getting there.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
As a romance, a drama, or even a sports movie, The Longest Ride never reaches a satisfying destination.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The young Eastwood is better than you might expect, though it's Chaplin who shines in this Nicholas Sparks romance.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
The real love story is between Eastwood and David Tattersall's camera, which spends so much time leering over the actor's cheekbones, abs and other attributes that you begin to wonder if someone's going to call Human Resources.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Conforms to a timeworn, and shopworn, Sparks formula of troubled protagonists receiving wisdom, or inspiration, or both, from unexpected sources.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
Eventful, polished, and knuckle-bitingly dull, the 10th film adapted from a novel by Nicholas Sparks, combines fate, bull riding and some powerful Hollywood bloodlines among its young cast.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Look, it's easy to laugh at this stuff - that's part of the game, in fact. To buy into these movies, you have to buy into the silliness. But The Longest Ride, for all its ridiculousness, comes by its emotions honestly.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Qualifies as one of the best Sparks films by virtue of not including any love-ghosts or destructive misinformation about how Alzheimer's works.

Name : Sandy Cohen / Alias : Associated Press
The film is likely to satisfy Sparks fans. And it brings something new to the romance genre: bull riding.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Everything in the movie is suffused by a vision of life that is resoundingly and evidently false, but as this vision is not repulsive, but is intended to reassure, the lies don't produce anger or frustration. No, they bring on the laughs.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
People don't go to Sparks movies for subtlety; they go to warm their hearts by bearing witness to true love. Of course, that requires a story that rings true. In "The Longest Ride," authenticity is in short supply.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
Though Tillman doesn't quite elevate the maudlin material into serious drama, the result is uncommonly sensitive.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
It's easy to tease a Nicholas Sparks movie. It's harder to admit that he's good at his niche - and has a string of 10 films, nearly all profitable, to prove it

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Can the ailing Ira help the young lovers work things out in his limited time left on earth - or even afterward? Let's just say Sparks works up to an ending that's as shamelessly preposterous as it is predictable.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
If this is your particular poison, it won't kill you. But anyone averse to Sparks' sappy touch may get sick from all the bull.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The Longest Ride is sentimental, forced and silly, but it's sure to hit the bull's-eye with its intended audience.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
Appealing performances by a trio of second- and third-generation Hollywood kids keep this three-hankie twaddle more bearable than it deserves, but "Ride" will surely go the longest with audiences for whom this is not their first Sparks rodeo.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Fairly tedious, despite the charm and sincerity of the actors.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
"The Longest Ride" treats us to a twist that's so ridiculous I think we're almost supposed to laugh. It's not quite on the "Are you KIDDING ME!?" level of awfulness as the big reveal in "Safe Haven," but it's close. It's close.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
It tries to bridge the gap between pop culture and cultural elitism, between high art and the common commodity that everyone else buys tickets to see. A worthy goal, but it results in a movie that has none of the virtues of either.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
Merely adding an older generation of lovers to a love story does not make your romance one for the ages.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Carolina settings, star-crossed lovers, elements of tragedy: Sparks' formula works. Get out your handkerchiefs, and rest assured that there will be uplift at the end.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
It runs a long 128 minutes. You have to wade through not just puddles of tears, but also piles of BS.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The two-plus hours is mostly marked by an emptiness born of scene after scene designed to blatantly manipulate emotions rather than trigger them.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Just as the basic plot points are hard to swallow, even the most rudimentary aspects of the characters' interactions feel forced, artificial and unspontaneous.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Even when Eastwood and Robertson, pleasant enough company, threaten to float off the screen, "The Longest Ride" glides along and delivers its reheated comfort food by the ton.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
This is spoon-fed entertainment, but it tastes pretty good.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's exactly what you'd expect, except executed with more-than-typical competence with the help of a few excellent actors and some gorgeously photographed rodeo scenes that capture the drama and thrill of bull riding.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
The Longest Ride is pretty darn tolerable - and sometimes even enjoyable - not just for fans but also for regular people who are, you know, cynical.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The Longest Ride has as much bull as the 10 previous Sparks adaptations. This is one of the few you can ride for longer than eight seconds.