 The A.V. Club 's Keith Phipps gave Departures a C − , writing that though it featured " handsome shots of provincial life " and encoffining scenes with a " poetic quality " , ultimately the film " drips from one overstated emotion to the next " . A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times that the film was " perfectly mediocre " , predictable , and banal in its combination of humour and melodrama . Despite its sometimes touching moments , he considered Departures " interesting mainly as an index of the Academy ’ s hopelessly timid and conventional tastes " . Tony Rayns of Film Comment gave a scathing review in which he denounced the script as " embarrassingly clunky and obvious " , the acting as merely " adequate " , and the film as but a " paean to the good @-@ looking corpse " . Adams gave Departures two out of four stars , praising the emotionally and visually arresting scenes of encoffinments and " loving attention to the textures , tastes and behaviours of semi @-@ rural Japan " but condemning the predictability of the plot ; he wrote that " Forty @-@ five minutes in , [ viewers have ] prepared a mental checklist of every turn that Daigo Kobayashi will face , then negotiate – and be danged if Takita doesn 't deliver on every one " . 
