Mona Lisa Smile Reviews

Glossy entertainment value but far from art.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles and Maggie Gyllenhaal furnish well-observed performances that frequently outshine Julia Roberts's reflex characterization in this female variant of "Dead Poets Society."

Full Review | Original Score: B-

Period dress, set design, manners and acting are fine--as is Mike Newell's direction. If only the script was less predictable.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

...would have been better served by characters with a little less formula than the paint-by-numbers projects so loved by these women of Wellesley College.

| Original Score: 2/4

Mike Newell directs a formulaic Roberts vehicle that isn't without its charm.

Full Review | Original Score: 60/100

Mike Newell takes the road most travelled in tackling the sexual apartheid and hysteria of the 1950s.

Full Review

Smiles turn to frowns when you sense a paint-by-numbers feminist formula taking control.

Full Review

Devoid of enjoyment, intelligence or interest.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

É um pouco difícil levá-lo a sério, já que sua postura de 'filme-denúncia' soa, no mínimo, anacrônica.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Considered less as a piece of entertainment and more as an argument constructed to further a feminist agenda, the film is hugely impressive.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

It's arthritic issues and pushy point of view add up to a grade that won't earn anyone here a diploma.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Roberts asks her students rhetorical questions: What makes art good or bad? Who decides? But the movie answers them as canonically as the syllabus Roberts abandons.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

Ambiguity [in this film] is the unwitting product of outrageous disorganization, wild ambivalence, and an unerring instinct for, well, error.

Full Review | Original Score: D+

Julia Roberts damns a paint-by-numbers kit of Van Gogh. Who is she trying to kid?

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

A keen sense of how women have swam through a whole lot of repression and pain back then, to pave the way for females to breeze along through in the here and now.

The performances here are winning, with [Julia] Roberts not afraid to share the screen with several younger actresses who are among the best and brightest in Hollywood today.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

This handsomely mounted and beautifully filmed drama sustains your interest for most of its running time and features fine performances across the board.

| Original Score: 2.5/4

If you are a fan of Julia Roberts' huge, horse-like head and her equally equine braying laugh, rest assured both are in large supply.

Full Review | Original Score: D

We sense the shallowness of the situations,realizing they exist solely to build our expectations and then give us exactly what we want. Fulfilling,yes; enlightening,no

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Roberts' character may be presented as a breath of fresh air, but the movie surrounding her is the cinematic equivalent of halitosis.

| Original Score: 2/4