Metacritic reviews

Unconvincing melodrama.

A lively, plush but unconvincing potboiler cobbled from familiar pieces of better films (and TV miniseries).

Lacks freshness and vitality.

A paint-by-numbers old-fashioned romantic epic, Head in the Clouds is neither romantic nor epic, but it does succeed at old-fashioned.

The film is a stodgy snooze, and Theron, who is about as expressive here as a porcelain doll, lacks all believability--she's followed her best performance (in Monster) with her worst.

The film feels more at home with sex than war, like a romance novel where the swinging lovers find their passions stirred by bombs exploding in the distance. Their three-way dalliances are so frivolous and silly that once the action turns dark, Duigan and his cast leave audiences unprepared for the emotional fallout.

This pulpy, sex-drenched wartime epic seems frivolous, quaint and foolishly prurient.

Stuart Townsend, Theron's reallife boyfriend, may have inner fires as an actor that have yet to be revealed, but in Head in the Clouds he's a somber puppy who looks as if Theron could eat him alive. I wish she had.

There's never a dull moment and seldom one that isn't sublimely ridiculous.

This spark-free film has no place to go on their resumes except under the heading of "Cringing Embarrassment."