Shopgirl Reviews
Top Critic
A slim, charming, romantic story, full of intentionally mild humor about strong themes -- passion, commitment, loneliness.
A minimalist almost-love story told with epic flourishes.
The sheer charm of Ms. Danes' performance, combined with the convincingly resigned sadness of Mr. Martin and the intense sincerity of the singularly uncharismatic Mr. Schwartzman, make this a deeply bittersweet film experience.
You get the feeling Martin's not really committed to his movie about a man who won't commit. And he keeps us from committing, as well.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Where the book was preciously and carefully crafted, the movie just feels precious.
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| Original Score: 2/4
It's a quiet, amusing, sad and hopeful film about the dissonance between age and youth, commitment and freedom, growth and stagnation.
| Original Score: B
It's not a lack of originality that makes Shopgirl too Saks for its own good; it's the attempt to make a distinctive item into a blue-light special that betrays it.
| Original Score: 2/4
A movie of exceptional delicacy, so much so that Shopgirl comes close to turning its quietness into a virtue.
| Original Score: B-
A faithful and engaging adaptation, adding Martin's skills as a screenwriter and actor to his fiction talents.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Shopgirl doesn't reach any cosmic conclusions. Nor is it intended to. But as an observation of recognizable emotions, it's a shining memento.
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| Original Score: B
Shopgirl's feathery plot is lifted by three sterling performances.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A case of precise observation of nothing. It's like looking through a microscope at an empty slide.
An oddly dreary love story, seemingly taking place in slow-motion.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Without realizing it, the film becomes an ode to middle-aged male lechery of a literate sort; it plays like Left Coast Woody Allen, and I don't mean that as a compliment.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The movie isn't downright bad, but it's disappointing and forgettable, failing to emulate Allen or anybody else worth a darn.
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| Original Score: 3/5
It's delicate stuff, and it's been brought to the screen with grace, humor and a mood that's wonderfully (here comes another of those film review words) bittersweet.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Danes, who does more with a wary or puzzled smile than most performers can do with an Oscar-baiting monologue, makes an uneven film worth seeing.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
I liked Shopgirl a lot, mainly because its heart is in the right place and because it is so refreshingly unpretentious.
The Steve Martin character in particular is fascinating, because he is a gentleman, but he's also an S.O.B.
There were some things I liked about Shopgirl, the film adaptation of Steve Martin's bestselling novella. I write those words with teeth firmly clenched, because it's basically a dreadful film that should never have been made.
Shopgirl is sadly vacuous, with a sadly vacuous center.
The May-December thing worked in Lost in Translation and it works here, thanks to the perceptive and gracefully romantic script that Martin has adapted from his novella.
| Original Score: 3/4
Danes' performance is a grace note in a movie that is otherwise misguided. The adaptation of Martin's bestselling novella lacks the flow and depth of its source material.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
With its somber air, its plaintive score of strings and its meditations on loneliness, this love triangle starring Steve Martin, Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman suggests Pretty Woman as remade by François Truffaut.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Martin is so flat and uninteresting in the role, you have to imagine charms that aren't apparent. There is no chemistry between the characters, because Martin brought no chemistry to the set.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Written, starring and co-produced by Martin, the film is directed by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie) with the studied dreaminess of a perfume ad.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Like his silver-maned paramour, the film ultimately lets Mirabelle down and leaves the viewer dissatisfied.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Shopgirl is a wistful account of the yearlong love affair between a 50-year-old millionaire and a lonely, debt-saddled service sector serf in her 20s.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Shopgirl, written by Steve Martin, based on his slender novel of the same name, is an elegant and exquisitely tailored romantic comedy.
| Original Score: 4/5
Whether intentionally or not, Martin has given us something truly spooky: A full-fledged portrait of a hollow man.
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| Original Score: B
In their way, Mirabelle and Ray are the deracinated West Coast equivalents of a Woody Allen couple -- she a lovely, somber thing who can't resist his erudition, he a proud snob who only thinks he's confessing his flaws with admirable honesty.
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| Original Score: B-
A wan, world-weary representation of anomie, loneliness, and low expectations, dressed up in the ill-fitting designer duds of the studio rom-com.
A smart, adult romance that rarely panders to clichés, and gives up the heady bliss of most such movies in favor of something bittersweet.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A smartly reconstituted yet largely faithful adaptation of his precisely crafted novella about the mixed signals, misinterpretations and melancholy life lessons that define bittersweet romance.
Certainly has the goods but it ultimately fails to make the sale.
