http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/kristen-wiig-in-welcome-to-me-and-carey-mulligan-in-far-from-the-madding-crowd/

All Ferrell’s done at the movies is further unleash his id. This is what Wiig does, too, but here she’s more artistically effective. The writing and directing and other actors are there to catch her. You’re not simply amused by her. You’re moved by her. That’s well left of American comedy’s center right now. But Wiig’s performance here argues that it doesn’t have to be.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-madding-review-20150501-column.html

This change of heart in our heroine suffers most from the leanness of the script. In Hardy's novel, her feelings are much more tied into Troy's sexual magnetism and what the young woman senses — that the dashing sergeant is the one man who doesn't need her. In the film, however, it seems that just a bit of fancy sword work does the trick. All we've been given to believe about Bathsheba crumbles in a few unbelievable moments, along with a stray lock of hair the sword slices away. Even Mulligan, as good as she is at giving Bathsheba a spine and a spirit, fades at this point. The film's best pairing is between Mulligan and Schoenaerts. Because Oak's unwavering devotion anchors the narrative, it's definitely the one to get right. Both characters are strong and stubborn, and yet the attraction is there. The actors make that tension palpable — a world of love, tenderness, hurt, rejection, respect playing out in their glances and brief conversations.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/fighting-on

And look what she throws it away on. Sturridge’s Troy, I’m afraid, is a dumbfounding blend of waxwork and wimp, and so often do his eyes mist over that I wondered whether his real problem was not the vagaries of lust but the Wessex pollen count. Why Bathsheba would give him the time of day, let alone her body and soul, is a mystery, but the film toils hard to make us believe in that surrender. Hence the wonderful closeup, after the first kiss with Troy, of Bathsheba’s hands held out before her, dangling, as if desire had reduced this tough and resolute figure to a doll. Needless to say, there is no right way to play her, any more than there is a right way to play Cleopatra. Hardy gave his heroine a symphonic range, and all an actress can do is pick out certain tones and strains—the fluted whimsy by which Bathsheba is occasionally stirred, or the brassiness of her anger. Julie Christie was the more accomplished flirt, and her beauty was composed of fire and air, whereas Mulligan relies more darkly on earth and water. She hoes the clods of soil like a peasant in a Millet painting, and plunges up to her waist to join Gabriel for the seasonal washing of sheep. In the light of that pluck, Nicholls is right to uproot a vital sentence from the book and assign it to her, practically intact: “It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language designed by men to express theirs.”

Just as Schlesinger’s film screams 1967 (check out Christie’s hair), so Vinterberg’s version will doubtless come to be viewed as a typical product of our time, in both its haste and its recurrent gloom. Though its social scope is narrower than Hardy’s, you do come away from it with a true sense of the shrouded world that he devised, where fate could frown upon even the blithest day. That is why Bathsheba, as she sets off to claim her inheritance, is already clad in scarlet—the same dashing hue as Troy’s uniform. She hasn’t met him yet, but he awaits.