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It's not likely to set the Thanksgiving box office afire (it's set during Halloween and it will open in only a handful of theaters), but writer-director Jim Sheridan's In America is garnering the strongest reviews among a slew of holiday contenders. Joel Siegel on Good Morning America describes it as one of the year's best films (a quote for a studio ad if ever there was one). Megan Lehmann in the New York Post calls it an eloquent, transcendent human drama about the trials of an Irish family who immigrate illegally to the U.S. A.O. Scott in the New York Times observes that Many of the elements in this film ... seem to promise a sticky bath of shameless sentimentality. However, he says, thanks to Jim Sheridan's graceful, scrupulously sincere direction and the dry intelligence of his cast, In America is likely to pierce the defenses of all but the most dogmatically cynical viewers. Claudia Puig in USA Today describes the movie as a classic story of losing and finding faith told with heart, humor and emotional heft. Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post suggests that the title suggests a Woody Guthrie-like paean to America. Thank God, it's not that. It's far too specific, too odd, too funny, too unusual to fit any mold other than its own. Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times warns that emotionally, the film is going to shake you up and hang you out to dry if you give it the chance. Still, several critics were left unshaken. John Anderson in Newsday comments that when Sheridan goes for the big, emotional, set piece, there's a whole lot of clanking going on. And Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe found In America to be a lesson-laden, tear-jerking fairy tale.