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88Turns the kleig lights around to produce a wry and dead-on commentary on the film industry and the journalists who cover it.
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80Terrifically funny romantic comedy, is a slam-dunk for Julia Roberts, the Michael Jordan of cuteness.
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75The result is a back-lot studio tour that's not exactly good-natured, but terrific fun and it gives the ensemble cast plenty of clowning opportunities.
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75Surprisingly funny and sweet, despite some missed comic opportunities and curious casting choices.
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67At its heart the film wants nothing more than to make you giggle, and at that it succeeds admirably.
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67Though an uneven, often confused, mixed bag -- the movie gradually comes together to be a fairly hilarious inside-Hollywood farce.
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63All these good actors and all Crystal's sass and witty candor can't bring back the heyday of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges. Or even, most of the time, their off-days.
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63For the farce it so desperately wants to be, the film often feels slack and too reliant on so-so punch lines for laughs.
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63Christopher Walken has the best moments in the whole thing, portraying the wacked-out auteur of the Gwen-and-Eddie vehicle. Sadly, he's only in America's Sweethearts a few hilarious minutes.
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63This movie is a cookie. A slightly stale generic-brand cookie.
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63You keep waiting for it to go into orbit, to be really fizzy and outrageous, like the screwball farce it wants to be. Instead, the film settles for the merely serviceable.
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60As enjoyable as this film is in parts, it's not nearly as successful as a whole. Enormously engaging in its opening segments, it's unable to sustain that good feeling over the long haul.
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Amusing enough, especially with its uniquely credible premise of a media fraud, to recommend.
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Surprise! Crystal has given himself most of the best lines, though he also allows a Doberman to have its way with him.
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50America's Sweethearts recycles "Singin' in the Rain" but lacks the sassy genius of that 1952 musical, which is still the best comedy ever made about Hollywood.
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50While the film delivers some sharp dialogue, overall it's soft and slightly unfocused.
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50Too eager to please to be truly dislikable, and Roberts and Cusack have a fine rapport.
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50Resoundingly so-so.
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50The movie is a polished muddle, fitfully amusing but with no spine.
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42No excuse for the bitterness and crudity in America's Sweethearts -- a noxious combination that erodes the 1930s and '40s screwball-comedy armature on which this mirthless movie is based.
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40It's dull, two-dimensional, and totally toothless.
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40Like a bottle of lukewarm Champagne -- an expensive one, judging by the label -- America's Sweethearts opens with a promising burst of effervescence and quickly goes flat.
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40Begins as a smartly promising, gently farcical comedy of manners and ends as sourly and haphazardly as the lives it is poking fun at.
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30It's mostly terrible. The movie has no sparkle, no charm, nothing to sweep us off our feet.
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30Chockablock with things we're not supposed to notice: that Roberts is wasted; that she and Cusack have no characters to play, so it's virtually impossible to understand why she loves him or vice versa; that the script provides comedy without bite and romance without resonance.
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30A lackluster screwball comedy.
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30The sparks don't fly -- they fall down and they can't get up.
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25Falls flat on screen, weighed down by far-fetched plot twists.
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25This is the downside of Roberts' giant success and her dazzling ability to charm: Every time she goes plain, as she did in the little-seen "Mary Reilly" and "Michael Collins," our princess simply fizzles.
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20The film isn't just banal, it's aggressively, arrogantly banal.
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20Obnoxious, transparent cornball comedy.
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20Overwritten by Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan, overdirected by Joe Roth, overplayed by most of the cast, yet typically undernourished.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 18
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Mixed: 1 out of 18
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Negative: 7 out of 18
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