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At times, the movie feels like a commercial for Wonder Bread, stretched to feature length.
Flipped is Rob Reiner's best film in 18 years.
Reiner, who made the similarly themed The Sure Thing about opposites who repel and attract, is a most sympathetic director of actors.
It's a bit too Wonder Years at times, but the odd two-narrators gimmick plays right into the film's "flip" in structure.
That Flipped isn't insufferably cute is a measure of its integrity. But it still strains to view the world through the eyes of children without a filter of grown-up cynicism.
We have here a movie that's pitch-perfect one minute and awkwardly schmaltzy the next.
Has my heart grown so cold and battle-scarred that I can't allow myself to be completely won over by Flipped, or is Flipped such a load of flavorless mush that there's not enough charm for me to embrace?
The importance of understanding varying perspectives is always worth communicating, and Flipped, despite its cloying approach, manages to deliver this idea with a decent amount of sincerity intact.
If the feature doesn't latch on to the senses immediately with its sugared claws, it's a long, ugly 85 minutes of dreadful behavior to endure, waiting for an ending that never arrives.
I suppose some people may respond to this nostalgic ode to innocence and chastity, but I found it insufferable.
...a fairy tale, an idealized memory. But for this adult, it was mostly humdrum and predictable. (Blu-ray Edition)
...if you want a wholesome, ultimately feel-good film about young love, this might be it. Or not.
Not perfect, but its aspirations are admirable, and its execution is surprisingly effective considering (or maybe because of) its unadulterated sentimentality.
The movie feels static, like a diorama of ?60s life rather than a living, breathing story.
Rob Reiner seems to be aiming for a boomer audience, but it's a relentless exercise in nostalgia -- clothes, hair styles, cars, and doo-wop soundtrack -- that feels manipulative.
You'll flip for this gentle, clever movie. You are hereby forgiven for "North," Mr. Reiner.
Perfectly innocent, unexpectedly charming.
...takes what could have been a charming coming-of-age story and buries it beneath layers of cinematic overkill that push you away from the film when they should be drawing you in.
The latest from director Rob Reiner is a well-meaning mess that wants to tap into universal experiences of childhood and first love but bogs down in squirm-inducing banalities.
The kids provide an earnest emotional through line to a tiny story, and I sort of hope it kicks off a new mature period for Reiner as a filmmaker.
It makes sense that Flipped is based on a book, because what it has going for it is a charm -- the pleasure of hanging out with likable characters -- that the movies don't have much time for lately.
Flipped is as phony as a poodle-skirted waitress at a mall diner, yet it's as sweet as a malt. A vanilla one.
Reiner was clearly sick the day they taught filmmaking at film school-you show, not tell the audience what's going on. What at first seems sort of clever quickly turns into an exercise in exasperating tedium.
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