65
Metascore
6 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Village VoiceMelissa AndersonVillage VoiceMelissa AndersonAs personal as it is political, Olson's meditative project offers a profound lesson on intimacy and history — and the ways in which both are distorted and remade by memory.
- 83The PlaylistDrew TaylorThe PlaylistDrew TaylorWhat keeps The Royal Road from feeling like its trapped in amber is the genuine heartbreak that Olson clearly feels, the rawness of her emotions and her dedicated willingness to share.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijThe Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijIf this ambitious film never quite coheres into a single whole, something that an artificial division into several chapters only helps to underline, it does provide a lot to chew on along the way.
- 70VarietyDennis HarveyVarietyDennis HarveyWhile this free-ranging agenda might easily have seemed overly random or pretentious, Olson’s confessional tenor lends it all a stream-of-consciousness intimacy.
- 50Slant MagazineClayton DillardSlant MagazineClayton DillardThe cumulative effect is altogether perplexing, as it's difficult to tell if Olson's trying to upend clichés or settle for them.
- 40The New York TimesGlenn KennyThe New York TimesGlenn KennyMs. Olson’s images are often captivating, but too often undercut by the aforementioned aspiring-to-the-dialectical voice-over, which is awkwardly written, and delivered with a lack of affect that grows tedious over the course of an hour.