Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Thank goodness the irreverent but earnest Diary of a Teenage Girl avoids the moralizing that would usually accompany a film about young people, sex and drugs.

Name : Elaine Teng / Alias : The New Republic
It's unlikely to make a box office splash, but it's a startlingly tough, authentic depiction of budding womanhood.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's work, but it's ultimately rewarding work. It tackles some truths that other movies wouldn't touch, not even with a stick and thick gloves.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
I made it two-thirds of the way through the routine sexual coming-of-age yarn "Diary of a Teenage Girl" when it occurred to me that anything else I could conceivably be doing would be more interesting.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
Heller's debut directorial effort is incisive and universal, despite its very specific and detailed setting.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : TIME Magazine
A movie of (increasingly rare) truly indie sensibility, made by women who are confident about healthy feminine resilience.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
The Diary of a Teenage Gir is the kind of movie that seems a lot more adventuresome than it is.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Working from Phoebe Gloeckner's 2002 graphic novel/memoir, Heller gets the shabby glamour and bleached sunshine of '70s San Francisco just right, coloring several scenes with vivid blooms of animation.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Films often fail to capture the turmoil of being a teenager - but not this one.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Expect to feel uncomfortable watching Diary of a Teenage Girl, which is precisely the point of this finely etched debut feature by writer/director Marielle Heller.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The novel is life-specific, but what makes Minnie - on the page and now on the screen - greater than any one girl is how she tells her own story in her own soaringly alive voice.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Frank, poignant and daring, "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" invites you into the mind-set of a sexually adventurous 16-year-old girl - and suggests you leave your judgment at the door.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A strikingly intimate look at a teenager's sexual life in an outstanding debut film.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
An honest and personal and unblurred examination (even through that druggy blur) of a tricky voyage into womanhood.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
It dares to show the heroine as something more complicated than a victim. As a result the movie lands somewhere outside the battle lines of contemporary gender politics, which may be why it feels true.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is a breakthrough moment in the culture in that it depicts youthful female sexuality . not just with the unapologetic frankness the boys usually get, but with an awareness of all the places a girl's urges will take her .

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Heller and Powley present a journey that, stripped to its most basic emotional elements, is timeless and universal.

Name : Kristin Tillotson / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is as rewarding as it is squirm-inducing for its honesty, audacity and artful portrayal of adolescence from a girl's point of view.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Any woman who survived puberty knows that girlhood is all about obsession - just ask Justin Bieber, One Direction, New Kids on the Block, or the Beatles.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Heller's empathy and, let's be honest, her denial of prurience appears to free Powley from embarrassment. She's seizing this part, not shrinking from it.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
a riveting, resonant first feature from Marielle Heller, with a breakout star performance from Brit actress Bel Powley.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Heller approaches the film in just the right way: As an absolute outgrowth of arty Minnie's own pent-up creativity.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
The loose quality makes for a bit of a shaggy story with some rough edges, but the bursting, youthful heart throbs with that mix of longing and triumph that is first love.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
Seldom has teenage sexual awakening been covered from a female perspective - with a fickle alternating confidence, self-doubt and voracious appetite - quite so frankly or delicately.

Name : Dennis Harvey / Alias : Variety
A fine adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner's autobiographical novel about a sexually precocious 1970s adolescence.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The film is harsh but wonderful. It shouldn't be funny, too, but somehow it is, and somehow it's the right kind of funny.

Name : Rebecca Keegan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Big summer action movies can be thrilling, but if you really want to feel your heart pounding out of your chest, try being a 15-year-old girl for 101 minutes.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Writer/director Marielle Heller, in her captivating debut film "The Diary of a Teenage Girl," hits exactly the right tone for a complicated balancing act, and for a film that could very easily have gone wrong.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
What a ballsy film - and honest too.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
For a movie about such fraught topics, sometimes rendered with admirable and non-squeamish explicitness, Diary often eschews melodrama; when the plot turns, it does so abruptly, providing a credible simulation of real-life tumult.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The first thing to know about The Diary of a Teenage Girl is that young British actress Powley is staggeringly good in it.