The reviews lean warmly positive, and they agree on why. Most critics describe the film as humane, thoughtful and quietly moving, and the praise clusters on Kore-eda’s handling of the premise: the dead choosing a single memory to keep, and a plain, observational style that makes a metaphysical idea feel ordinary. Variety notes the mixing of professional actors and non-professionals in the cast, and several others admire the restraint with which the chosen memories are recreated rather than dressed up. The film’s thinking about memory, and about filmmaking itself, comes up in nearly every notice.
Reservations are scarce. Among the reviews whose text we could read, the spread is narrow, running from solid approval to open admiration, and nobody argues that the film is cold or slight. The two lower figures in the tally belong to reviews we could not access in full, so no specific complaint is on record. Read as a group, the critics are closer to agreement than the number suggests.