Oranges and Sunshine (15)

Drama

The critical consensus

You want to be moved more than you are by a film that doesn’t tap the emotions half as much as the facts. Loach shows promise, though.

(*) (*) Neil Smith, Total Film, 18/03/2011

Like his father, Loach directs simply and without fuss, even if this unremittingly bleak tale lacks the Kes director’s trademark humour. But as first films go, it’s impressive and accomplished.

(*) (*) James Mottram, The List, 18/03/2011

Moving if low-key, Jim Loach's debut feature is proof that compassionate, socially conscious filmmaking runs in the family.

(*) (*) David Hughes, Empire Online, 29/03/2011

Emily Watson gives the only believable performance in a film beset by clunky dialogue and torpid mise-en-scene.

(*) (*) (*) (*) Nigel Andrews, Financial Times, 30/03/2011

A disappointing attempt to illuminate a dark time in Commonwealth history.

(*) (*) (*) David McGinty, The Skinny, 31/03/2011

One suspects Humphreys's book, on which Rona Munro's script is based, would be a harrowing read, but the internal drama of those child migrants is only briefly glimpsed here.

(*) (*) Anthony Quinn, The Independent, 01/04/2011

Jim Loach's sombre, painful film packs a hard punch; harder than you'd expect from the soft-focus poster.

(*) Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 31/03/2011

Bright and moving.

(*) Chris Tookey, Daily Mail, 31/03/2011

A slickly assembled, moving drama that rightly has a fire in its belly about a great wrong.

(*) Alison Rowat, The Herald, 31/03/2011

Layered with anger and raw emotion.

Paul Greenwood, Evening Times, 31/03/2011

(*) (*) Tim Robey, The Telegraph, 01/04/2011

Quiet moments of power ensue, but so too do the gently manipulative clichés – the plaintive piano score, the moments of false tension, the one-dimensional bureaucratic bad guys – that plague much issue-driven British cinema.

(*) (*) (*) Alistair Harkness, The Scotsman, 02/04/2011

The picture isn't as dramatically charged or informative as you might expect...yet it is moving and powerfully acted.

(*) (*) Henry Fitzherbert, Daily Express, 01/04/2011

Oranges and Sunshine is a plodding, drab-looking chore which has facts and figures in place of dialogue, and plotlines which suggest, meekly, that they might be quite exciting, before they tiptoe away, never to be seen again.

Nicholas Barber, The Independent on Sunday, 03/04/2011

Jim Loach's debut is a powerful, deeply moving, understated account of a major social injustice.

Philip French, The Observer, 03/04/2011