The film premiere took place on May 2, 2011 at the SilverScreen Theater at the
Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. Actor
Angela Bassett attended the premiere. On
Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 59% based on reviews from 37 critics and 79% audience rating. On
Metacritic, the film had an average score of 57 out of 100, based on 18 reviews, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars and wrote: "here is a film that could save your life." He wrote "I am unable to eat or drink anything, and my (therefore) perfect diet of canned nutrition has given me an ideal weight and incredibly good blood numbers. I don’t recommend that you get sick to get well, however." In a P.S., he noted "I have recently decided to ditch my canned nutrition and switch to a liquid diet based on fresh fruits and vegetables. Yes, I consulted my physician." Loren King of
The Boston Globe gave it three out of four stars and remarked that "what
An Inconvenient Truth did for global warming, Lee Fulkerson's persuasive documentary does for a
vegan diet". Jeannette Catsoulis of the
New York Times described it as making "a pedantic yet persuasive case for banishing meat and dairy from the dinner table," while also being a "trudge through statistics, graphs and grainy film of cholesterol bubbles and arterial plaque." Sean O'Connell of
The Washington Post gave the film two out of four stars and argued that it is "an interesting and informative health lecture that's sandwiched into a dry, repetitive documentary" and said that "it's desperately in need of charisma, humor or personality to balance the steady stream of scientific facts we're asked to absorb".
Rex Reed of
The New York Observer gave the film 2/4, criticizing its "funereal" tone and writing, "the movie says nothing we don't already know, and 96 minutes is too long to tell us how sick we are." Corey Hall of the
Metro Times gave the film a "C" and stated that "while it's impossible to dispute the basic premise that eating more vegetables is good for you, Forks adopts a staunch anti-meat and -dairy stance that leaves the door open for criticism." Producer Brian Wendel told journalist
Avery Yale Kamila of the
Portland Press Herald that "it's been very hard to get publicity. It's happened several times at very large publications who said, 'We're sorry, we can't (run a story about the film) because of our advertisers.'" Kamila reported that "Despite the trouble the filmmakers encountered with some mainstream media outlets, the film has generated significant buzz in the social media sphere." The film was awarded the Documentary/Special Interest Title of the Year in 2012 by the
Entertainment Merchants Association.
VegNews listed it as one of "The 18 Best Vegan Documentaries to Start Streaming Now" in 2024. == Books ==