Critic Reviews

More than a great love story. It's both a lighthearted and deeply impassioned inspirational lesson about life. [4 April 1986]

A Room with a View enjoys its storytelling so much that I enjoyed the very process of it. The story moved slowly, it seemed, for the same reason you try to make ice cream last: because it's so good.

A movie with exquisite period detail. [8 Apr 1994]

Two cheers, at least, for permitting the past to appear not as a stern lesson but as a delicious irrelevance. [10 Mar 1986]

Distinguished by superb ensemble acting, intelligent writing and stunning design.

Perhaps the primary reason A Room With a View is so involving is that Ivory has cast the film perfectly, and given each of the actors ample room to breathe. Even the characters you're not supposed to like are allowed their moments of vulnerable humanity.

It's hard to believe A Room With a View cost so little; the costumes and sets are dazzling and the acting is superb--from two-time Oscar-winner Smith to the smallest role, there's not a false note.

It's all rather amusing, but after awhile you tire of all the perfect little nuances about characters who seem like prototypes for a certain type of Victorian novel. [6 Mar 1986, p.23(E)]

Bonham Carter is like an undergraduate in a university production who seems rather good considering that her performance is only an intelligent diversion while she prepares herself for a career in another field. [24 Mar 1986]

Though it's meant as a droll comedy of manners, what emerges is mincing, crabbed, and petty.