Stuck in Love (2013)
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Reviews Counted: 40
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 17
It struggles to enliven its uneven script, but Stuck in Love boasts enough winning performances from its solid veteran cast to offer an appealing diversion for rom-com enthusiasts.
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 2
It struggles to enliven its uneven script, but Stuck in Love boasts enough winning performances from its solid veteran cast to offer an appealing diversion for rom-com enthusiasts.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 5,463
Movie Info
Three years past his divorce, veteran novelist Bill Borgens (Academy Award (R) nominee Greg Kinnear) can't stop obsessing over, let alone spying on, his ex-wife Erica (Academy Award (R) winner Jennifer Connelly), who ignominiously left him for another man. Even as his neighbor-with-benefits, Tricia (Kristen Bell) tries to push him back into the dating pool, he remains blind to anyone else's charms. Meanwhile, his fiercely independent collegiate daughter Samantha (Lily Collins) is publishing her
ADVERTISEMENT
All Critics (41) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (23) | Rotten (17)
Perfectly adequate airplane reading.
Top CriticThe story, while unsurprising, is also quietly satisfying. Everyone comes to accept some hard truths about themselves.
Cliched literary trappings come together in "Stuck in Love," but the final product feels more like a footnote than a finished work.
Although "Stuck in Love" is an indie film, it hews slavishly to Hollywood formulas right down to its comfy Thanksgiving Day ending. It's all so easy, isn't it?
Worthwhile for its fine performances, including the best work that Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly have done in quite a while.
Writer-director Josh Boone populates Stuck in Love with smart characters breaking from emotional holding patterns of varying contours.
Highlighted by standout performances by Greg Kinnear and Lily Collins, this film has it all, some humor, some tears, and a lot of truth.
A little heavy-handed at times, "Stuck in Love" is saved from the maudlin pile by its stellar cast.
[VIDEO ESSAY] A well blended cocktail of familial connections, aspirations, and separations, "Stuck in Love" is a complex romantic comedy that keeps on giving even when you think it has run its course.
[Boone's] semiautobiographical film is a confident, at times wonderfully nuanced, and often well-paced rewrite of his own parents' divorce.
Familiar tale of indie-suburban angst.
Like many films paying lip service to the world of writing and publishing, Stuck in Love is in a big hurry to get to the good parts
Just like most romantic comedies (though this is more of a "rom-dram"), Stuck In Love. believes nothing is worthier than refusing to give up after you've been rebuffed in no uncertain terms.
Three writers in one family explore the different shades of love.
Set in a world of resplendent beach homes and scrubbed-clean towns, populated by genetically blessed people who wouldn't know a real concern if it smacked them in the face.
But all too soon, Boone's questionable taste level and constant, very self-conscious but none-too-deep emphasis on the what, how and why of Writers becomes oppressive and extremely precious.
Immensely likable but a little too tidy in its emotional payoff, the movie benefits from its charming, empathetic ensemble.
Nicely acted, but a bit all over the place
Starts sit-comish but as it becomes more complex it takes on a somewhat literary tone.
Audience Reviews for Stuck in Love
Super Reviewer
A very personal story of the novelist Bill Borgens (Greg Kinnear) who has been struggling to keep it together since his wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly) left him for a younger man three years earlier is nothing extraordinary but that is a beauty of it: you can almost recognize and compare situations in this movie with everyday life around you... It is almost tragi-comical when you see our hero spying on her ex and her new husband while pretending to be jogging, and insists that their sixteen-year-old son, Rusty (Nat Wolff), set a place at the Thanksgiving table for Erica every year, even though she never comes. But, this year holiday is different - their nineteen-year-old daughter Sam (Lily Collins) comes home from college with momentous news: her first novel has been accepted for publication. When her father suggests that Sam share her good news with Erica, she balks, refusing to have anything to do with the woman she believes betrayed her father! As usual in life, the truth is always well hidden.
It is interesting to mention that in Australia and New Zealand the film will be released under the title of A Place For Me... but that won't stop the audience there to laugh at some of the ludicrous scenarios while being taken on a roller-coaster of emotions. My favourite here were the outstanding performance from Lily Collins and a very unexpected cameo from Stephen King. It is sometimes too light-hearted but definitelly worth seeing.
Super Reviewer
Discussion Forum
What's Hot On RT
New Desolation of Smaug trailer!
Naomi Watts is Princess Di
Gravity sets new record
Trailer for a squirrely heist flick
See what's on TV tonight
Latest News on Stuck in Love
July 3, 2013:
Critics Consensus: Despicable Me 2 is Certified FreshThis week at the movies, we've got an army of minions (Despicable Me 2, with voice work by Steve...
Fresh Links
Featured
Halloween Movies For Wimps
Scary movies too scary for you? Here are some alternatives for October 31st.
10 Best Superhero TV Shows
HitFix combs through TV history to compile a superpowered list.
Ridiculous Movie Mistakes
RollingStone proves even the best movies miss a details here and there.
Deadly Movie Kids
Moviefone lists 11 Movie Kids Who Could Kick Our Asses.
50 States, 50 Movies
For July 4th, TimeOut has compiled 50 state-specific movie choices.
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter!
Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
Featured on RT
- NYFF: Joaquin Phoenix and James Gray talk The Immigrant 0
- Box Office Guru Wrapup: Gravity Stuns with Record $55M Launch 28
- Primetime Preview: Witches of East End, Once Upon a Time and More 2
- Weekly Ketchup: Disney Plans Live Action Cruella de Vil Movie 35
- Primetime Preview: Last Man Standing, The Neighbors and More 5
- Critics Consensus: Gravity is Certified Fresh 68
- Parental Guidance: Gravity and Parkland 2
Top Headlines
Foreign Titles
- Un invierno en la playa (ES)
- A Place for Me (AU)
Writer-director Boone's debut feature is a light, breezy affair, often reminiscent of the sort of milk-toast dramas American networks air on Sunday evenings. Think 'Seventh Heaven' with liberals. His characters, who he clearly feels affection for even if we can't, don't stand up closely to scrutiny. The set-up is almost identical to Noah Baumbach's 'The Squid & the Whale' but Boone asks us to take the side of the self-absorbed novelist father rather than the rational mother. Bill spends the movie lamenting the break-up of his marriage while at the same time conducting an affair with a married neighbor (Bell), an irony Boone's script never addresses. Sam has quite an odious personality and her sudden transformation into a sensitive soul never feels realistic. Likewise Rusty, who goes from shy geek to world's-greatest-boyfriend with the swing of a punch.
A film-maker like Todd Solondz could take these characters as they are and make this a biting satire of middle class self indulgence. At one point Rusty reveals how his father pays him a weekly wage to write his journal, all so he doesn't have to take "a shitty job in MacDonalds". None of the characters have problems that couldn't be solved by heeding the advice of anyone who implored "Get over yourself!". Quite why we should back these characters is unclear, and if they weren't essayed by affable personalities like Kinnear, Collins and Wolff the film could be a gruelling test of audience willpower. Collins, daughter of Phil, is a real revelation, a tomboyish Audrey Hepburn who is perfectly cast, in her looks, as Connelly's daughter. At times, the actress gets Boone out of a hole, saving awkwardly written moments with her expressive face.
Considering he's made a movie about writing, Boone could do well to learn the most important element of drama; conflict. His characters simply have it all too easy; they just don't realize it. Maybe Boone doesn't either?