Savages, The

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The Savages is terrific -- a movie of uncommon appreciation for the nature and nurture that go into making us who we are, a perfectly calibrated drama both compassionate and unsentimental.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

A brutal encounter with mortality told with uncommon humanity, wit and humor.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

This movie provides no phony catharsis or closure; it develops a vision of people growing in spurts from their most terrible mistakes.

Time Richard Schickel

I wouldn't call the film inspirational -- it is too well observed to succumb to easy sentiment -- but its realism is patiently engaging and subtly insinuating. And Linney and Hoffman are extraordinary.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

What makes the movie memorable is the precision of its tone, its finely calibrated combination of bitterness and warmth. Of course the acting is tremendous, and you'd expect nothing less.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Bringing a tough, astringent wit to a subject too often wrapped in the cozy blanket of sentimentality or cute humor, Tamara Jenkins takes a frank look at the indignities of aging in The Savages, a black comedy that invites viewers to laugh or at least smile ruefully at the dying of the light.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages, is a beautifully nuanced tragicomedy about two floundering souls.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

It is more sad-funny than funny-funny, but Jenkins has enough empathy and wit to realize that even the sad parts are, somehow, funny.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Jenkins brings a rigor, intelligence and eye for the slightly absurd to the proceedings that is instantly disarming.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The Savages is a delightful movie--the perfect companion piece (and antidote) to the year’s other superb convalescent-dementia picture, "Away From Her."

Newsweek David Ansen

It sounds grimmer than it plays, thanks to Jenkins's sardonic, deadpan humor and the superb cast, who invest these damaged characters with rich, flawed, hilarious humanity. This bittersweet X-ray of American family dynamics may not be a Hallmark-card notion of a holiday movie, but it's one any son or daughter can take to heart.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Jenkins' superlative work proves her first film was no fluke; let's hope it doesn't take another nine years to hear from her again.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A movie of absurdist humor, brutal realism and dementia.

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

A bracingly honest, funny movie about death and family that skillfully sidesteps the usual pitfalls of sentimentality and mawkishness. It’s what you might call an awards season miracle.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Smartly written and beautifully played, The Savages is about that point in life where you look around and realize that where you are is probably as far as you're going to get. In spite of this, the movie's a comedy, dry and humane.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Both Linney and Hoffman are so specific in creating these characters that we see them as people, not elements in a plot. Hoffman in particular shows how many disguises he has within his seemingly immutable presence; would you know it is the same actor here and in two other films this season, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and "Charlie Wilson's War"?

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

With the help of acting giants, Jenkins turns The Savages into a twisted, bittersweet pleasure.

USA Today Claudia Puig

While the film is heart-wrenchingly sad, it also is mordantly funny, uncomfortably prickly and above all, unflinching in its depiction of a believable sibling relationship.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

I generally resist calling any actor's work "brave" or "fearless" or any such thing, but Bosco's work here made me reconsider that self-imposed ban. It's incredible, harrowing, precise stuff.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The Tony-winning Bosco, one of the great stage actors of the last 50 years, does a lot with a little in his restricted role; he's haughty, almost dignified by his angry silence. Linney and Hoffman stay pitch-perfect in their noisy desperation and sullen withdrawal.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Darkly hilarious.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The frequent outbursts of comedy help alleviate a tone that's appropriately muted and sad, and Jenkins should be credited for refusing to tack smiley-faces onto a tough, possibly lose-lose situation.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

A darkly funny journey about life ticking by and the change to make wrongs right.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

I can't begin to count the ways in which The Savages pleased me, but the very best of them is the way Tamara Jenkins's comedy stays tough while sneakily turning tender.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Disappointment, delusion, dementia, death--did I mention this is a comedy?

Film Threat Jamie Tipps

The interaction between Hoffman and Linney makes following their characters from their winter of hard experience to a spring of renewed hope well worth the while.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

The movie is dotted with moments of grace and whacked-out humor that got me on board for this damaged duo's liberation.

The New Yorker David Denby

Vital, honest, and engaging.

Empire Andrew Male

A richly nuanced American comedy, with two acting talents working at their absolute peak.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The Savages is funny in the if-you-didn't-laugh-you'd-cry way and superbly acted by all involved, including the supporting cast of home-care attendants, nurses, hospital administrators, intake personnel and nursing-home staff.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The Savages is a TV movie made for the big screen - and it needs the larger venue to accommodate the huge performances of its stars, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

These are fascinating, three-dimensional individuals brought into the foreground by a pair of today's finest actors.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Suffused with clever lines, characters with neurotic tics and a pervasive, jocular black humour, The Savages is more about craft than art, but the craft, especially in the writing and acting, is at a high level.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The right mix of humor and horror and with not even a shred of sentimentality.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

As thin and jokey as this movie often is, I prefer it to the serioso treatment that usually encrusts this type of material. At its best, The Savages captures the lunacy that comes with coping with sorrow.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The film has a dreary, worn quality; much of it is set in winter in Buffalo, N.Y., after all. You know before long that the best you can hope for is that these folks won't kill each other or themselves.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The Savages is ultimately about two siblings, both around 40, in the midst of learning it's never too late to start embracing life, no matter how rotten a hand you were dealt in the past.