All Critics (63)
|
Top Critics (16)
|
Fresh (13)
|
Rotten (50)
|
DVD (4)
The film becomes unintentionally funny when he falls for another hustler (Margarita Levieva) with even less conscience, their grand passion leading to ludicrous behavior and soap-opera dialogue.
The film doesn't quite come off, though lots and lots of clothes do during its randy, random 97 minutes.
Although Kutcher deserves some credit for trying to spread his professional wings, it quickly becomes clear that he's in over his head.
A witless homage to Shampoo and American Gigolo that's brain-dead on arrival.
Its formulaic, unconvincing story adds little to the conversation about slack ambition, mutual exploitation and evolving social mores.
Props to Kutcher for going to surprising, painful places. There's something haunted in his portrayal that hits hard and sticks.
The tale of a guy who's just a victim of being a jerk, coping with the horrible curse of being good-looking.
Shallow, melodramatic, pretentious and wildly misguided, it's also ambitious, entertaining and rather funny.
Kutcher is a credible and potent leading man with an easy address to the camera. He carries off the movie with some style.
Letting things slide into a sort of low-calorie moral vacuum, Mackenzie hasn't so much nailed LA's culture of skin-deep gratification as produced an advert for it.
The ghosts of Shampoo, American Gigolo and even Alfie (both versions) cruelly haunt the ripe and raunchy frames of Mackenzie's Spread - another "shallow-stud-in-need-of-redemption" movie that pales in the face of its predecessors.
It's deeply moral soft-core porn.
The very impressive Spread deserves to be a cherished gem.
The promising beginning deteriorates into a baffling shambles, with each character changing their entire personality at least once.
Spread devolves into your predictable, well-worn morality tale, and while there are beautiful people and emotional quandries aplenty, what we're really left with is a turgid but flashy romcom.
Surprisingly believable as a preening hotshot - who'd have thought it? - Ashton Kutcher is ultimately undone by a disappointingly moralistic script that can't quite allow his easy-cum, easy-go hedonist to go unpunished.
It's fun when it's at its bitchiest, and Kutcher's astute performance will surprise a few people.
I admired the way the movie avoided the usual romantic comedy happy ending, but the film's bleakness is unlikely to win it many friends at the box office.
Spread is as fluffy as you can get, while you wonder how anyone could fall for someone like Nikki who dresses like a cross between Julian Clary and a far-right thug. Ghastly.
[Kutcher's] not a bad actor, in a lazy, self-conscious sort of way, but he's being propelled through a plot that has no guile, no subtlety, nothing at all, in fact, beyond a barely understood desire to punish him.
As there's nothing to the central character except his supremely selfish lifestyle, when that's taken from him by the inevitable romance and redemption, it's hard to care what happens.
Spread is sleazier than Tiger Woods in a zebra-print tuxedo but amid the flailing boobs and six-packs there's a fair bit of polish, probably thanks to talented young Scottish director David Mackenzie.
A sex comedy with plenty of sex, not enough comedy, and nowhere near enough smarts to pull off its final act attempts at Midnight Cowboy-style pathos.
Allegedly a sex-com, this has moments of charm but the shallow tawdryness of the lead's life choices taints the whole film.
More Critic Reviews
62%
——
97%
Top Critic
