The reviews are unanimous in their approval, and unusually consistent about what earns it. Most critics single out Cuarón’s direction, which they credit with taking a child’s imagination seriously rather than talking down to it: the heightened fairy-tale sets, the live-action Ramayana sequences, the snow-shake moment and the rooftop escape are the details that keep recurring. Several note that the film works as well for adults as for children, and that its case for magic and dignity is made through pictures rather than speeches.
Where they part is on the source. Empire and The New York Times both record that Cuarón takes liberties with Burnett’s novel, and both approve, the latter calling it reinvention rather than embalming. Nobody registers a genuine reservation; the spread runs from admiring to rapturous, with the 1995 notices warmest and the later reappraisals from Vulture, Time Out and IndieWire a shade cooler while still calling it the best version of the story.