Jackie & Ryan Reviews
May 3, 2020
[Jackie & Ryan] is about a pair of struggling people trying hard to make everything alright.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
July 10, 2015
There's a familiar tune to this modest low-budget romance about musicians who fall in love, yet it's given a fresh spin by a set of charming performances and a screenplay that generally sidesteps cliches.
July 10, 2015
Sweet if unexciting love story about two musicians.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
July 6, 2015
A tender romantic drama about two music lovers who face steep and unruly challenges during hard times.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
July 4, 2015
The film feels like an uncomfortable hodgepodge of styles and tones - gritty and realistic when it's following Ryan, awkwardly staged when it's following Jackie.
July 3, 2015
If a film based on author Nicholas Sparks' work is like an over-produced power ballad with a 128-piece orchestra, writer/director Ami Canaan Mann's "Jackie & Ryan" is the non-ironic acoustic guitar cover of the same tune.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
July 3, 2015
A romance of a gentle, bittersweet, grownup variety that doesn't pretend that every connection has to be a grand, sweeping, happily-ever-after thing.
July 2, 2015
"Jackie & Ryan" may prove too low-key and deliberately paced for less patient viewers, but distinct pleasures are to be had from this compactly shot film's easy rhythms, affecting tone and nicely modulated performances.
July 2, 2015
You anticipate a cheap, sentimental ending. But it is not to be, and the movie is much the better for it.
July 2, 2015
The section of the movie that should offer a climactic rush, however fleeting, feels instead more like falling action, or even a postscript.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
July 2, 2015
It's refreshing to see a romance-even a slightly tepid one-that acknowledges and even embraces its transient nature.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
July 1, 2015
"Jackie & Ryan" isn't profound work, but it carries real heart and private moments of panic.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
July 1, 2015
Jackie & Ryan is a sort of low-rent Nicholas Sparks romance that, for want of a better way to put it, never generates any sparks of its own.
July 1, 2015
For a Katherine Heigl vehicle, "Jackie & Ryan" stars a whole lot of Ben Barnes. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
June 30, 2015
More of a "comeback" for Ben Barnes than Katherine Heigl, who gamely but guardedly gives this her best shot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
June 29, 2015
The best thing about it is is that it shies away from formula, and the worst is either the finger tattoos, or the fact that it hasn't really come up with much to replace the formula it so carefully and laudably avoids.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
June 29, 2015
Despite the film's repeated recourse to Americana clich, Jackie & Ryan turns out to be a tender, affecting music-driven love story.
June 28, 2015
The film comes undone in its clumsy attempts to transform its story into a parable of economic distress.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
September 11, 2014
Low on stakes, light on originality, and limp in execution, so little of consequence happens in "Jackie & Ryan" that we'd lost interest long before the film sputtered to a halt.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
September 8, 2014
The modesty of the story, the simple story-telling and honest emotions all come together in a satisfying whole.