Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Tanne has clearly made a close study of his real-life inspirations, yet his movie is soon hostage to the couple's history. His characters feel on loan and, despite his actors, eventually make for dull company .

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
This tender, intimate drama has the grand resonance of a historical epic.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Though it's barely 84 minutes long, this buoyant yet reflective movie captures the ever-shifting mood of a daylong encounter that changed both its protagonists' lives.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Sawyers and Sumpter . [are] better than the writing, which follows its diagram and lays out the conflicts and personality differences very, very neatly.

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
Southside With You has a claim to relevance for anyone who was moved even a little bit by the inauguration, or, almost 20 years earlier, by Do the Right Thing.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
A classic meet-cute with a twist.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
It's a sweet-natured, gentle film that might remind more than a few watchers of a special date in their own life, long ago.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyer are terrifically cast as younger versions of Michelle and Barack Obama in Richard Tanne's disarmingly romantic walkabout.

Name : Edward Douglas / Alias : New York Daily News
Equally clever and charming, and ultimately a pretty good date movie in its own right.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Southside With You" proves once and for all that a romantic film doesn't rely on suspense. We know these people are getting together. What holds us to our seats is wondering how it will happen.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
It may not offer a fresh perspective on the world's most famous couple, but effectively resurrects their initial appeal in public life by uncovering its roots.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Southside doesn't hang on epiphanies; instead, it delivers something more modest: a tender, unrushed love story.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A sweet date-night movie about a date that wasn't really a date. Until it was.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Here's the date movie of the year, about a first 1989 date between Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers) and Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter). Both actors are terrific, suggesting the powerhouses they're playing without undue mimickry.

Name : Oliver Jones / Alias : New York Observer
For a film with relatively modest intentions, Southside With You can stir up some epic and opposing waves of emotion.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
How pleasant to watch a subtle, sweet-natured romantic tale about Barack and Michelle Obama devoid of the partisan rancor and rhetoric of the ongoing presidential campaign.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
A small, successful sketch of now-great lives.

Name : Sam Adams / Alias : TheWrap
One might question why a simple first-date story needs to involve the future president and first lady, but its near-total lack of precursors suggest that if it weren't about one of the most famous black couples, it would likely not have been made at all.

Name : Kyle Buchanan / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Fortunately, Tanne didn't have to compromise at all with his two charismatic leads: Not only are they dead ringers for Barack and Michelle, but they go beyond impression to deliver something real and human-sized.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
As a work of imagination inspired by fact, the film shimmers with warmth.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Tanne presents a Richard Linklater-style examination of a day and evening together, where two people in their 20s - she a lawyer at a downtown firm and he a summer associate at the same shop - slowly come to know each other.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Nuanced and charming, Southside With You is a sunny, strolling odyssey through African-American life in 1989, filtered through two future icons as they navigate the world around them and their place in it.

Name : Odie Henderson / Alias : RogerEbert.com
An irresistibly romantic and rousing success.

Name : David Sims / Alias : The Atlantic
A gentle, rose-tinted piece of political nostalgia-one that glances at the divisions in American society, but still casts a optimistic view toward whatever's next.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
President Obama's fans and haters alike will find something to enjoy in this slightly stilted yet oddly fascinating account of the Harvard law student's first date with Michelle Robinson, the woman who would eventually become his wife.

Name : April Wolfe / Alias : Village Voice
Sawyers seems to have absconded with one of the real Obama's discarded cigarette butts and sucked in his Marlboro Red essence, while Sumpter gives a solid but overshadowed performance .

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
In the end, Tanne has given us a movie that is warm and watchable without overdoing it.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
It's a bit like Before Sunrise, only with the leader of the free world in the Ethan Hawke role.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
A deceptively simple, remarkably lean, and well-paced indie pic about the young Barack Obama's first date with the young first-lady-to-be Michelle Robinson.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
A delightfully low-key portrait that is as universal as it is grounded in a well-chronicled public-private life.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Of course this is a stylized - and yes, on occasion, idealized - version of the launching point of a lifelong romance between two young Chicago residents who would go on to make history. That's pretty much the point.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Tribune News Service
One wouldn't quite say this date movie is political, but this deeply personal portrayal of the President and First Lady is inherently political - asserting their humanity and the specific life experiences that brought them to the White House.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
The mollifying figure on display here bears little resemblance to the hyperpartisan president Obama turned out to be, but it's sweet to remember things could have been different.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
Southside With You showcases a city as photogenic, dynamic, and charming as the lovers themselves.

Name : Brian Lowry / Alias : CNN.com
Nicely conveys a broader, more intimate portrait of the First Couple, the movie probably would have been enriched if Tanne hadn't hemmed himself in so much with the conceit and instead traced more of the early stages of their courtship.

Name : Zach Schonfeld / Alias : Newsweek
This is a small-scale romance with small ambitions but fairly big heart.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
First-time filmmaker Richard Tanne eschews politics and heavy foreshadowing, opting instead to craft a breezy, intimate and tender film about two people making that fateful first connection.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
It's breezy and cute and will do absolutely nothing to sway anyone's politics. Which is exactly the point.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A warm and surprisingly engaging account of the first date of Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson.

Name : Nick Allen / Alias : RogerEbert.com
How often do we see movies where characters are given the freedom to just walk and talk?

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
While it contains some minor political elements - as does real life - this is at heart a near-perfect date movie, a nonpartisan walking and talking love story.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"Southside With You" plays like "Before Sunrise" if those two characters had a really epic epilogue.