Metacritic reviews

Excellent cinematography on the road and particularly good camerawork for the dismal gray 1930s Chicago settings. Salenger is wonderful, and so is the wolf.

The Journey of Natty Gann is one of those dead earnest, richly satisfying "family adventures" with which the Disney name has long been associated, despite the fact that the studio has made very few successful ones. It's the kind of film we think Disney is supposed to make, regardless of whether the studio actually does. [25 Oct 1985, p.C1]

The director keeps the pacing brisk, and if he doesn't make as emotional a picture as someone else might have, The Journey of Natty Gann has a quiet dignity.

The Journey of Natty Gann shows how skillful filmmaking can take something that's almost unendurably hokey and make it charming. Beautifully photographed and designed, evocatively scored, it's a pleasantly archaic family entertainment in the Disney tradition. [18 Jan 1986, p.G1]

So if you're in the market for a "family" film, Natty Gann qualifies. But that doesn't mean it's a boring, namby-pamby entertainment. Rather, it's that Natty, in her cap and jacket and determined look, is a character with universal appeal. [15 Oct 1985, p.2C]

It's not very special, but it's nice to see a Disney film that follows the rules of the family-film genre as Walt laid them down, rather than trying to emulate Spielberg's empty, high-tech grandiosity.

Beautifully shot and well acted (Meredith Salenger in a fine performance as Natty), there's a real sense of period, even if the film does occasionally become over-sentimental.

If The Journey of Natty Gann were only a speedier, more energetic movie, Natty might have real staying power.

More a period piece of Americana than a rousing adventure, The Journey of Natty Gann is a generally diverting variation on a boy and his dog: this time it's a girl and her wolf.

Natty Gann may have been created with the thought of giving young women a heroine to admire. Perhaps, to return to Places in the Heart, the difference is between a film written out of a personal need to tell a particular story and one created as a "property," full of sure-fire elements that have worked in the past: a kid, a dog, a missing parent. The real missing element is heart. [11 Oct 1985, p.1]