Metacritic reviews

The result is a beguiling and often poignant pageant of outsider musicians, but the broken heart of this extraordinary film comes directly from Zobel's own personal experience.

A terrific, small, funny, sad movie.

Great World Of Sound is painfully specific about the music-scouting grind.

The laughs flow, but Zobel isn't content to rely solely on them. To his credit, he allows Martin and Clarence - and the film - to develop consciences.

Morally ambiguous, subtly crafted, resolutely free of cliché and made with almost no money, The Great World of Sound is under-the-radar independent filmmaking in the Jarmusch-Cassavetes mode, both noble and ruthless in spirit.

Blessed with a witty script (by Zobel and co-writer George Smith), a talented ensemble of little-known character actors and a Meredith Willson-like feel for just-plain-folks Americans, this is a low-key but enormously charming picture.

A fitting 21st-century addition to the genre. The film's meager plotting and casual melancholy peg it as a modest indie, but these ingredients dovetail nicely with Zobel's bigger theme about the futility of the modern world.

I found Mr. Zobel’s film touching and amusing, but it also left me a bit queasy.

Enthusiastically received at Sundance, "Great World" is an intriguing look at our obsession with being successful and famous.

The joke is that the salesmen believe they're actually trying to discover talent and - like the people they're encouraging - are victims.