I Can Only Imagine's reviews
Media reviews
Variety
Relatively unique among faith-based films, it?s a decent addition to Hollywood?s most hit-or-miss genre ? the music biopic ? that abruptly ends where the first-act break typically occurs in such movies.
Los Angeles Times
If the film is affecting, it's due to Quaid's dark, committed performance. In focusing solely on the origin story of the song, we can only imagine, but not understand, the ways in which it's touched listeners.
The Guardian
For all the faith-based platitudes baked into the script, it has to be conceded that directing brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin steer the ship steadily and draw out sincere and persuasive performances (...). It almost succeeded in seducing even this atheistic leftie viewer until the last seconds, when it blew it with a pre-credits revelation.
The Wrap
Is that fear of complexity why, ultimately, so many faith-based movies treat feelings like problems with one obvious solution? Even the song itself is a series of questions about a hoped-for moment, yet pitched with a suitably gathering anthemic force.
Rolling Stone
This faith movie makes the same mistakes as some of its genre: the sudden pretension of evangelization, the satanic world, the square and abstracted from reality characters, the bad acting and the predictable dialogue.
The A.V. Club
This is an interesting idea, executed with a reductive, tin-eared understanding of what constitutes art to go along with a faith-based movie?s reductive, tin-eared understanding of what constitutes entertainment. 'I Can Only Imagine' makes cursory attempts to contextualize the song?s success.
The Hollywood Reporter
The film, directed in plodding fashion by The Erwin Brothers, doesn't shy away from a single predictable emotional beat. But it does shy away from fully depicting the extent of the father's abuse. Although Bart refers to being beaten as a child, the only moment of violence involves Arthur hitting him over the head with a plate when he's a strapping young man. The film essentially undercuts its chief message by being coy.