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Reviews Counted:85
Fresh:45
Rotten:40
Average Rating:5.5/10
Consensus: Despite the strength of its earnest portrayal of family dysfunction, Introducing the Dwights is predictable and tries too hard to be quirky.
Theatrical Release:Jul 4, 2007 Limited
Box Office: $263,040
Synopsis: This Australian coming-of-age comedy/drama features SECRETS AND LIES star Brenda Blethyn as Jeannie, a semi-monstrous mom who gave up a promising career as a British comic to move Down Under and... [More]
Starring: Brenda Blethyn, Richard Wilson, Khan Chittenden, Frankie J. Holden
Director: Cherie Nowlan
Ultimately this wondrous film is about letting go -- of old wardrobes, bad jokes, unrealistic dreams and of children and parental ties. You leave glad to have met the Dwights and applauding their adaptability, if not Mom's jokes.
Top CriticIt gives us a few interesting characters and allows us to follow them through a critical phase of change and growth. It does what all good coming of age movies do, and that makes it a worthy and welcome entry into the genre.
Top CriticUnfortunately, by making the movie both a comedic coming of age story and a family drama, [screenwriter] Thompson ultimately weakens the end result.
Keith Thompson's screenplay is clever and ensures that every character is well-rounded and recognizably human.
Top CriticA throw-your-hands-up, head-shaking disappointment.
[The film] likes these people and these kooky scenarios too much to detach itself enough to simply observe them. And it doesn't understand them well enough to convince us they make sense.
Top CriticBlethyn creates sympathy for a manipulative, prickly character who's struggling to redefine her roles onstage and off. Director Cherie Nowlan steers the comedy to a feel-good ending.
Slightly slapsticky with broad Aussie humour, Cherie Nowlan's Introducing the Dwights is an ordinary dramedy that features a fine performance by British star Blenda Blethyn, but falls short in charm and originality.
Blethyn gives a ... real, lived-in performance that could only come from a show-business veteran herself.
The script's attempt to splice together a fumbling love story with a portrait of toxic personality disorder feels incongruous, like a serving of porridge flambé au whisky.
Top CriticThis is the best kind of family dramedy, skewering the contentious relationship between parent and adult child but never failing to celebrate life’s major passages as anything less than trials to be gotten through, and then cherished.
A surface-level examination of family dynamics that can't escape its trite origins.
Blethyn's character was someone I did not enjoy spending so much time with. Her character was so irritating that I was happy to see the ending credits roll.
The supporting players are amiable, and while the family's multiple dysfunctions verge on cartoonishness, the actors keep their characters relatively realistic.
Director Cherie Nowlan creates vivid personalities for the entire family and exposes the raw nerves of the biting humor.
How is it possible that none of the people who made Introducing the Dwights or put it in theaters noticed that even when the main character is being 'nice,' she is so intolerable that she makes you long for a volume knob so you can turn her down?
The psychology here borders on the ugly, while the comedy stays light, a contrast that doesn't work a lot of the time.
Keeps its quirks in check as a family comes together, with an authenticity that you can't buy with a bigger budget.
The cast cannot hide the movie's derivative shortcomings, which only remind us that we've seen better and funnier elsewhere.
Top CriticJean Dwight (Brenda Blethyn) is perhaps the most overbearing, self-obsessed and irritating matriarchal big screen figure since Norman Bates’ mum in ‘Psycho’.
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