Entertainment Weekly critic has this to say about Maggie Gyllenhall’s “Sherrybaby”:
. . . from the opening of the movie, she has you hanging on her every word and gesture. Blond and beaming, she speaks in a slack, dazed little-girl voice — the sound of a burnout looking for the next sensation — that makes her sullen sexuality seem an eruption from within. Sherry believes in her willowy body and not much else. She’s a cherry-bomb hellion who never grew up; she wants and wants, and gives too little in return. Yet Maggie Gyllenhaal is such a miracle of an actress that she makes you respond to the innocence of Sherry’s desperate, selfish destruction. I was gripped by the way that she holds a cigarette, her two fingers stretched out in a girl’s rigid notion of ”maturity,” and by the way her head dips slightly, with sulky sensuality, like something out of an old Cyndi Lauper video. You may not like the character — you’d be deluded if you did — yet your heart opens up and bleeds for her.
Read the entire review here.