Denzel Washington's spellbinding film based on the true story set in 1935 about a debate team from Wiley College, an obscure black institution in Texas that defeated Harvard for the national championship. Washington plays their coach, who demands the highest standards, but the film is not another story about an underdog championship, but a searing reminder of the racist society the team lived in. On a night journey, Washington and his students happen upon a lynching; the horror and danger are overwhelming. With Nate Parker touching as the team researcher who becomes a last-minute substitute, Denzel Whitaker as debater and future CORE founder James Farmer Jr., Jurnee Smollett as a debater who calls on her deepest feelings, and Forest Whitaker as a local preacher who becomes galvanized. It's a deep emotional experience.

— Roger Ebert, naming "The Great Debaters" one of the year's 10 best films.

There's an air of extreme predictability and inevitability in the script - which takes liberties like moving the climactic debate from the University of Southern California to the grander precincts of Harvard.

— Lou Lumenick, New York Post

Had the director opted to dig a little deeper, get a little rougher, and stray just a bit outside the established framework, The Great Debaters could have been a great film instead of just a good film. It's easily worth seeing for the superlative performances, the still-important history lessons, and the really excellent mid-'30s production design, but aside from the basic meat of the story, you've seen it all before. The Great Debaters is also beholden to one or two subplots that it really doesn't need. The professor's politics and the debate team's activities are more than enough to fill a worthwhile movie, but the screenplay dallies too long in dead-end side stories.

— Scott Weinberg, cinematical.com

While it does feature the word great in its title, "The Great Debaters" settles for being merely watchable. This fact-based drama is well-intentioned but gets a little bogged down in the details.

— Jeff Vice, Deseret Morning News

Washington and the young cast carry everything off with unwavering conviction. Nate Parker and Denzel Whitaker are like bookends of passion: Parker is upfront about his rage against society and his attraction for his teammate (Jurnee Smollett), while Whitaker suppresses his boiling feelings until the film's climax. (He's no relation to dignified Forest Whitaker, who plays his father and the upright president of Wiley College.)

— Lawrence Toppman, The Charlotte Observer

Yet even when the film is flimsy and derivative - at times, Washington's Tolson carries on like the willfully provocative Robin Williams of Dead Poets Society - it has liveliness and warmth. Washington taps the potential in the material's vivid juxtapositions: juke joints and classrooms, illiterate rednecks and hyper-literate African-Americans intent on establishing an educational tradition of their own.

— Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun

There may be little here we haven't seen before, but rarely has it been executed this expertly.

For all its formulaic trappings — and Washington the filmmaker takes few chances — Debaters reveals itself to be an engrossing, if flawed, entertainment.

— Kevin Williamson, Jam! Movies

These early scenes of academic hardball have a "Paper Chase" dynamic to them, and give the movie a time-and-place uniqueness that keeps it highly watchable.

Life-of-the-mind characters are unfortunately rare in African-American film, and it's particularly jolting to find them in a period story. These are richly drawn - they are so convincingly fluent in Western classics that they matter-of-factly reference Thoreau to prove a point about civil disobedience.

— Gary Thompson, Philadelphia Daily News

This sounds like every other overcoming-adversity movie ever made, including Washington's directorial debut, "Antwone Fisher." But formulaic and manipulative as "Debaters" is, it's also smarter, wider-ranging and way, way better-acted than the average inspiring instructional.

— Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News

Inspirational movies about black heroism carry a certain weight, an obligation to uplift, entertain and inform audiences of episodes and figures neglected by history books. Where some movies (including last year's Glory Road) buckle under the pressure to Disney-fy the proceedings, Debaters works a nifty balance. It is entertaining, thanks largely to a script by Robert Eisele that isn't afraid to find humor amid difficult circumstances. It is inspirational. But it also has a tough-mindedness and an admirable refusal to sugarcoat the contours of racism. For every plot expediency or compromise – a romance for the sake of having a romance, a story thread or two left dangling – The Great Debaters takes chances to bring the period to life.

— Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News

Because it is so old-school Hollywood, with a weakness for standard moments and pat situations, "The Great Debaters" initially comes off as easily dismissible. Largely saving it from that fate is the presence and ability of Denzel Washington, who costars with Forest Whitaker and directs from Robert Eisele's script. Working hard on both sides of the camera, Washington has grafted his intensity onto this production, giving it a kind of backbone it would not otherwise have.

— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

All in all, The Great Debaters is one of the happiest surprises of the season; it's marvelously edifying entertainment you should not miss.

— Andrew Sarris, New York Observer

It's important, it's deeply inspiring, it's something from our not-so-distant past we must not forget, and it should be must-see viewing for high school and college students of all backgrounds.

— Richard Roper

The Great Debaters is unapologetically predictable but well crafted enough to pull it off. That it features the star wattage of Washington (who also directed) and Whitaker and the production label of Oprah Winfrey gives it cachet for a wide audience.

— Claudia Puig, USA Today

Director Denzel Washington's "The Great Debaters" is pure Hollywood, not without its share of storytelling cliches and golden-toned inspirational teaching moments, but you know what? The results really are inspirational. It is an underdog story produced by Oprah Winfrey, among others, about the real-life Wiley College, a small Methodist African-American institution located in northeast Texas. Under coach Melvin B. Tolson, a poet and educator, the Wiley debate team argued its way to the 1935 national championship against the University of Southern California. Wiley's climactic adversary has been changed to Harvard for the movie. If you're bothered by that, well, then you're probably bugged by every other historical drama brought to the screen.

— Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

The Great Debaters is history at its most entertaining, and a vivid reminder that we're all living in a country built and then rebuilt by people who turned their passion into logical, rational arguments that moved us, step by step, down the road to justice.

— Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

It could have been overly sentimental and feel-good, this movie about a pioneering black debate team in the segregated South. But Denzel Washington, as director and star, manages to find the right tone much of the time in "The Great Debaters."

— Christy Lemire, Associated Press

The movie wants to do a lot and say even more. But what you truly remember are the awe and surprise on the debaters' faces when they win a debate or the expectant look they have the first time they enter a hallowed Harvard auditorium: We belong here, too. For a film about the power of speech, it's the quiet moments of rapture that say everything.

— Wesley Morris, Boston Globe