Sweet November

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Neither a masterpiece nor a remake of one, but its wistfulness is infectious, and its melancholy mood lingers for days.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

It's a small film, and a far from perfect one, but it allows her (Theron) to extend her range as no previous role has done.

Chicago Tribune Loren King

Nice to look at but too calculated and clichéd to resonate beyond its surface slickness.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Anyone in the market for a bittersweet romantic comedy could do worse.

Slate David Edelstein

He's (Reeves) not as good as he was playing a menacing Georgia wife-beater in The Gift, but he's an awfully convincing jerk.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

If the movie works on its own insipid level, it's because of high-gear star power -- 50 times the captivator Dennis ever was, Theron is terrific at creating adorable intimacy with little help from the script or director and exudes more guileless élan than any of the film's many puppies.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Does neither of its leads any favors. But they fill their roles admirably, and then some. Time and again, in a movie that repeatedly threatens mawkishness, you can sense them gently steering away just in the nick of time.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The sort of movie that seems to exist for no good reason except to keep the studio's pipeline filled with filmed product.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The sweetest thing about Sweet November (a remake of the 1968 movie) is the on-screen magic between Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves. But that's pretty much where the magic ends.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

It's classic movie manipulation gone amok.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Does neither of its leads any favors. But they fill their roles admirably, and then some. Time and again, in a movie that repeatedly threatens mawkishness, you can sense them gently steering away just in the nick of time.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

It's all corny and contrived and usually sensitive. The filmmakers even dare to show the effects of illness--a subject frequently glamorized to the point of being insulting--in a love scene of rare honesty.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A contrived but entirely workable premise is given a well-tooled treatment in Sweet November, a femme-slanted doomed romance with a heavily calculated feel to it.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

November is when we eat turkey, and Sweet November is pretty much a fat, juicy gobbler passed off as Valentine's Day date bait.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

If Sweet November were a puppy, it would have rabies.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

This is one of those movies in which there are only two types of people: officious yuppie pricks, and the beautiful folks who stop and smell the daisies. What keeps it (barely) from being completely intolerable is Keanu Reeves' hilariously awful lead performance.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This whimsical weeper gets off to an awkward start and never finds its footing.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A film that means to be seductive but merely progresses from the contrived to the manipulative.

Film.com Robert Horton

Charlize Theron has charm and skill, but no actress could survive this role, which has the gravity and verisimilitude of a sketch from a late-sixties Nancy Sinatra TV special.

Miami Herald Curtis Morgan

The enigma of Reeves, sort of a human black hole on screen, works well in "The Matrix" but it drains the life from weepy romance.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Passes off pathological behavior as romantic bliss. It's about two sick and twisted people playing mind games and calling it love.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

A hellacious stew of romance and tragedy that gives the words "screwball" and "pathos" a bad name.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A very low grade romantic drama indeed, a love story with all the life and death intensity of a heat rash.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Get out your handkerchiefs. No, scratch that -- get out a pair of windshield wipers and staple them to your brow. Perhaps they'll obscure the screen.

LA Weekly Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

This feeble remake offers little more than two pretty and willing leads who nonetheless can't hide their embarrassment over being set up as distractions to hide the film's thorough lack of coherence and appeal.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The film's last half-hour -- or do I mean its final two weeks? -- is meant to keep the audience sniffling and sobbing uncontrollably, but the only thing likely to elicit tears is the sight of Mr. Reeves dressed in a white dinner jacket crooning "Time After Time."

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A front-end collision of a romance.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Beware all male viewers who enter here, you are in chick-movie hell.

Dallas Observer Staff (Not credited)

It could be said that Reeves is one of the great manifestations of the mysteriousness of stardom. He gives the worst performance in Sweet November, and he's the best thing about it.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Shamelessly manipulative in a crude, bullying way.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Sara is supposed to be an adorable screwball with a fatal disease. Ms. Theron certainly gets the adorable right. With a comic style that's close to unerring, she not only deserves better than this junk but the very best.