Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Khouri manages, with terrific flair, to keep the extremes of screwball farce and blood-curdling family intensity on one continuum -- not only through the strength of the performances (including one from James Garner, who, as Sida's dad, gets the best one-liners) but in the ways they match across time.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Even though she's (Khouri) determined to give us feel-good entertainment, she's not at all afraid to let the darker moments be very dark indeed.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The only character we get to know fully as she evolves from child to older woman is Vivi. Too bad the movie didn't also trace the lives of her "sisters." That might have been divine.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Ya-Ya Sisterhood is so divine. It offers a world where friendship is forever, the half-empty glass is refilled and the men are perfect.

Boston Globe Renee Graham

There's death, domestic violence, alcoholism, racism, attempted suicide, and a mental breakdown. Naturally, it's a comedy about the eccentricities of Southern women.

New Times (L.A.) Bill Gallo

These wonderfully adept actresses take so much pleasure in playing long-faded Southern belles, in mixing the genteel and the bawdy as they conduct their extended therapy session, that it will be difficult for even the most hardened Yankee curmudgeon to resist them.

Variety Todd McCarthy

As a rich, gum-chewing matron who tools around in her canary-yellow Rolls-Royce, Flanagan is the picture's real scene-stealer.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Gives us a lot to enjoy and something most studio movies don't even try for: an attempt at the richness, density and sheer contrariness of life.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Women deserve better women's pictures -- men too.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Less successful in exploring the long-term effects of mental breakdown than in dispensing short-term comic pick-me-ups, Ya-Ya wrings abundant laughter and tears.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The movie finally comes together into something that is genuinely -- and almost quietly -- stirring.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

This is a work of excess and passion, an untidy sprawl of a motion picture that is sometimes ragged, occasionally uncertain, but -- and this is what's important -- always warm, accessible and rich in emotional life.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

During one or two comic set-pieces, you can see the appeal that the Ya-Yas hold for readers. But you can also sense, farther in the distance, the more vital film that might have been.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Suffers from an excess of material crammed into too little screen time. There's so much story that the characters get short shrift; you have to wonder, for example, what became of Siddalee's three siblings.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

A question: If you hire actresses from England, Kansas, Ireland and Michigan, shouldn't someone teach them all to do believable Southern accents -- and remind them to keep doing those accents as the film goes on?

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The film relies a bit too much on the humor of older women flipping each other off and mouthing obscenities, although it is hilarious to see the usually proper Smith frantically chopping up a roofie to slip into Sidda's drink.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The magnolias in Callie Khouri's fried green movie look limp.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

As for the Ya-Yas: They're not as much fun as the First Wives' Club.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Divine cast keeps 'Ya-Ya Sisterhood' from falling flat

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Khouri seems never to have met a "chick flick" cliché she didn't like, from the ubiquity of emotional telephone conversations to the lachrymose (but entirely predictable and dramatically flabby) reconciliation at the end.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The tart, often jauntily profane dialogue and sharp interactions of the present-day relationships give Divine Secrets its occasional zip; when Khouri takes us back in time, especially to the Ya-Yas' early childhood, the movie flags.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

For those enamored with Wells' books, however, this film version will likely meet their expectations, and it undoubtedly will spawn more Ya-Ya chapters throughout the country.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Isn't so much a movie as a tract, a parable in which the charred wisdom of its characters is much more significant than the intricacies of their lives.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Should the likes of Burstyn, Flanagan, Smith, and Knight have to be reduced to playing eccentric caricatures of aging Southern belles?

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Perhaps not since "Steel Magnolias" has Hollywood turned out a movie so resolutely for and about women.

Slate David Edelstein

The movie doesn't have any undercurrents, psychological or cinematic. -- The Blessed Mother ends up looking like a drunken housewife.

Village Voice Mark Holcomb

As earnest and smart-alecky as an entire season of Designing Women, Ya-Ya is sure to score with its redemptive family melodramatics and stock eccentric characterizations.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Except for Ashley Judd, who shows true grit as Vivi in her babe days, the effect is like being buried in molasses. For guys whose pain threshold is way low when it comes to the bonding of Steel Magnolias, Ya-Ya is a definite no-no.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The thinness of the movie, which is what is intermittently enjoyable about it, is at odds with its sob-sister pretensions.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

For a strangely-titled, female-oriented drama about mothers and daughters bonding, try "The Joy Luck Club" and leave Ya-Ya as a phrase uttered by one-year olds who have yet to learn how to talk.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Rubber-stamped from the same mold that has produced an inexhaustible supply of fictional Southern belles who drink too much, talk too much, think about themselves too much, try too hard to be the most unforgettable character you've ever met, and are, in general, insufferable.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It reduces a large cast to an unwieldy collection of simpletons and caricatures.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

What is perhaps most disappointing about this ham-handed film, though, particularly since it was directed by the screenwriter of the righteously raging "Thelma and Louise," is its crypto-misogyny.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Khouri's new picture takes all this talent and turns it into the kind of manipulative mush that Hollywood used to market under the condescending label "woman's picture" years ago.

Time Richard Schickel

This is potentially near tragic material, and playing it as an all-forgiving comedy is a waste of everyone's time.