All Critics (33)
|
Top Critics (15)
|
Fresh (5)
|
Rotten (29)
|
DVD (3)
The script fails to establish the likability of any of the main characters, which dulls the sense of urgency during the dramatic moments.
What ensues is a couple of days of confession and mild debauchery. It's all sketchy and banal.
It's possible that Niederhoffer was too close to her novel to stand back from its excesses. She's made a seriously self-indulgent movie about self-indulgent people.
[It] somehow skirts utter loathsomeness by dint of its elegant camerawork and a few finely tuned performances. I'm not suggesting you run out to the theater and see this, but if it comes on cable someday and you have a big pile of laundry to fold...
Instead of Rachel Getting Married with an Oscar-nominated Anne Hathaway, we get Galt Niederhoffer's misbegotten, miscast snoozefest with Katie Holmes struggling to prove that there is life as an actress while still being Mrs. Tom Cruise.
With its tart dialogue and its perfect ending, it is sensitive as well as sagacious. It's a rare combination.
Poignant? Only because someone worked pretty hard on this.
... isn't so much a romantic comedy as a lightweight indie ensemble drama that never quite gels.
Neo-screwball small talk cinema, Katie Holmes on doormat duty, and Candice Bergen as a neurotic, sour conventional mom setting back women's lib way into the last century, when she conversely reigned as leading small screen feminist on Murphy Brown.
If only we had a better feel for these people, some reason to care as much as they clearly do, who's to say how satisfying 'The Romantics' might have been?
As far as missing-bridegroom movies go, this is less inspiring than The Hangover.
Adapting her novel for the screen, Galt Niederhoffer has improved her own story, tightening the script as well as the cast of characters.
The questionable conclusion might not satisfy your need for a definitive finale, but the film doesn't give you much to be satisfied with in the first place.
Flimsy melodrama, filled with clumsy, hand-held camerawork and turgid, pretentious literary prattle, signifying very little.
Indie wedding drama is too mature for young teens.
Has its minor pleasures. But they are too few and far between to warrant sitting through the entire film.
More Critic Reviews
Top Critic
