"This is a film that washes over you in a wave of quiet subtleties, marking a profoundly striking debut."
— Belen Edwards, Mashable
"This is not just one of the great films of its year, but one of the finest first films in the annals of the medium."
— Charles Bramesco, Little White Lies
"Pulitzer-winning stage dramatist Annie Baker paints childhood as a midsummer daydream full of tragicomic adult behaviour in her droll, charming film debut."
— Stephen Dalton, The Film Verdict
"Baker’s tingling delicacy of touch makes it a subtly distinctive experience: it’s a film I already looked forward to revisiting while tiptoeing through it the first time."
— Tim Robey, The Telegraph
"Janet Planet is alive with possibility, not just for the youngster but also for the remarkable writer-director who announces her big-screen ambitions with stunning force."
— Tim Grierson, Screen Daily
"First-time actor Zoe Ziegler impresses as the young girl quietly absorbing the life her single mother has created, with Julianne Nicholson equally marvellous as her loving but unknowable parent."
— Tim Grierson, Screen International
"There is nothing artificial here, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t mystery. It’s the mystery of people and their unusual behaviors and the way they can flit in and out of our lives and our consciousness."
— Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire
"Much as the title suggests, it is like we are being drawn into the orbit of something immense. Conversely, and this is crucial to its understated beauty, it is also something small. In wondrous detail, it shows how one person can become an entire world."
— Chase Hutchinson, Collider
"A small jewel. The movie contains no non-diegetic music and even limits major camera movement to a relatively small handful of scenes. Nothing distracts from the tender wisdom of its unimpeachably unsentimental gaze and the vividness of its very specific New England milieu. David Rooney"
— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
"When was the last time someone who has so mastered the stage – Baker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, mind you – crafted a directorial feature debut of such artistic confidence? A film that feels a million miles from the confines of a sterile theatrical setting. A movie that is creatively propelled more by a filmmaker’s eye than the words composed by a screenwriter."
— Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist
