A rousing, eye-filling, song-and-dance period musical spectacular that - despite a certain inability to decide whether it wants to be a kids' movie or "Les Miserables" - is a surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining throwback to the great movie musical style of the '40s and '50s. [10 Apr 1992]

Smooth direction, vigorous performances, competent music, spotty script, and a running time that overstays its welcome. [10 Apr 1992]

A quite competent and energetic effort that uses live actors. [10 Apr 1992]

It's a bit of a throwback and a solid family film and, at the time, represented a well-intentioned leap of faith of the sort that studios rarely take.

Its intentions seem fairly modest, and so are its achievements. It's a modestly enjoyable diversion.

Sumptuous production values and fitfully impressive choreography notwithstanding, Newsies was a major misfire for Disney Studios.

This is primarily a children's movie and I have a hard time working up much rancor against a movie as campily perverse as this one is.

A Disney musical with an undistinguished score (Alan Menken and Jack Feldman), fair to middling choreography (Kenny Ortega and Peggy Holmes), and clunky direction (Ortega) that still manages to be entertaining in spots because of its story.

It has been put together with just enough efficiency to qualify as an oddball labor of love.

It's mostly entertaining, and has some strong moments, but it lacks the special magic that a musical needs, that sense of its inhabiting a parallel universe where any wonderful thing can happen at any moment, including music suddenly arising from nowhere. [10 Apr 1992]

As much as the film may try to peddle warmth and solidarity, it remains disturbingly cold and impersonal, limited by the formulaic writing of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White and stymied by Ortega's apparent distance from his cast. [10 Apr 1992]

Newsies becomes a string of set-pieces, some of which work, some of which don't, all barreling full-speed ahead toward its Teddy Roosevelt deus ex machina. [10 Apr 1992]

Newsies' drag is its predictable script.... It's not a bad hook, but the treatment is uninspired, despite a fairly engaging turn by Bale. [08 Apr 1992]

This one doesn't have enough zesty ideas to revive the breed.