Metascore
26 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 30 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 30
  2. Negative: 21 out of 30
  1. 75
    Despite being rooted firmly in "chick flick" territory (with a high "cuteness" index), it has the capacity to please to viewers of both genders who appreciate the genre.
  2. Amongst the cardboard-cutout supporting characters, Lauren Graham brings a welcome deadpan sensibility to the overeager proceedings.
  3. Keaton is so over-the-top, so loud and so physically animated that when Daphne develops a case of laryngitis mid-way through the movie, it's as if a neighbor's car alarm has finally been shut down. However, in those silent moments, when Daphne is communicating with notes, you realize how much you like this actress.
  4. Because I Said So might have been sharper if it had focused on the mother/daughter relationship and didn't blunt its story with romantic comedy.
  5. 50
    A mild exercise in deliberate mediocrity, with chuckles and heartwarming moments distributed as carefully as nuts in a factory-made brownie. The movie's lack of ambition is hardly surprising, but both Ms. Moore and Ms. Keaton, who can wring flustered comedy out of the mildest provocation, deserve better.
  6. Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    50
    The problem with Because I Said So isn't that it's formulaic and predictable; fans of romantic comedy can get around those qualities, and even appreciate them. It's that the film keeps missing out on its own opportunities for comic gold.
  7. 50
    Any relationship between the world of Because I Said So and actual human behavior is purely coincidental.
  8. Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    40
    Like nearly all of Lehmann's post- "Heathers" work, it's lazy and disinterested--a hack-for-hire job any number of film-school grads could have put through its uninspired paces.
  9. Reviewed by: Dennis Harvey
    40
    An exercise in canned cuteness, Because I Said So pushes its normally appealing stars, Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore, over the edge of sitcom hysteria.
  10. Reviewed by: Angel Cohn
    38
    Overall, Graham and Perabo have so little to do that it's hard to imagine why Maggie has three daughters instead of one; they just clutter up her screen time. As to Perabo, she seems to exist for the sole purpose of making risque remarks, and the family dog has more memorable moments.
  11. This slapdash, charmless, baldly boomer-chasing romantic comedy, directed by Michael Lehmann (Heathers) from a clunky, orgasm-obsessed script by Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson, is the lazy studio's answer to a call for more age-appropriate entertainment for "More" magazine readers.
  12. Reviewed by: Toddy Burton
    30
    With a lazy, cliché, rabid plot and paper-thin character development, Because I Said So might as well have been directed by a trained chimpanzee.
  13. 30
    What the filmmakers try to play for laughs -- a mom and her daughters chatting about orgasms while shoe shopping -- isn't funny, it's creepy.
  14. Throughout most of her career Diane Keaton has shown sound instincts, so it's a mystery why she failed to sniff this false, brittle comedy out as a waste of her gifts.
  15. 25
    The search for true love is the backbone of romantic comedy as well as the lifeblood of match.com, but this film's clumsy, completely inauthentic portrayal of it is handled in a shockingly tedious fashion.
  16. 25
    Thirty years after "Annie Hall," the beloved actress is scraping below the bottom of the barrel with this desperately unfunny farce, in which she mugs and pratfalls in the worst performance of her entire career.
  17. It's a dreadful exercise, tin-eared and sincere, bereft of any truth or inspiration.
  18. Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    25
    It's so derivative, unfunny and thuddingly bad that it's one of the more cringe-inducing movies of a genre chock-full of clunkers.
  19. 25
    A sloppily made bowl of reheated chick-flick cliches.
  20. Reviewed by: Sara Brady
    25
    The film drags by, charmlessly, endlessly. Shrieking.
  21. A 105-minute cringe-a-thon that reduces the Katharine Hepburn of her generation to a sitcom harpy presiding over a brood of Valley Girl chicks.
  22. As close to perfectly unwatchable as it can be.
  23. I hope Keaton doesn't begin to make a specialty of these roles. They play into what is least attractive in her repertoire – the loosey-goosey, knockabout side of her that all too swiftly devolves into hysterics.
  24. It's hard to imagine how the movie year could possibly produce a more annoyingly stupid movie. It's so witless, broadly played and insulting to anyone's intelligence that it's almost as offensive, in its own way, as "Jackass: The Movie."
  25. Watching this movie, with Diane Keaton cast as the ne plus ultra of irritating, overbearing mothers, is roughly the equivalent of listening to fingernails on a chalkboard for nearly two hours.
  26. 20
    By far the most appallingly cretinous picture in which Keaton has ever appeared.
  27. 20
    It's tempting to write off Because I Said So as just another dumb, bad comedy, made yesterday and forgotten tomorrow. But no matter how negligible this particular picture is, it's time to look a little deeper. If these are the only kinds of roles we can conceive for actresses who have grown into their faces, as Keaton has, it's no wonder so many younger performers are seeking the knife.
  28. Not so much phoned in as it is auto-dialed with a text-to-speech prerecorded message in one of those creepy robotic voices.
  29. This film bespeaks a truly startling mistrust of the movie audience, and, what's more, a disrespect for the feature film medium. Yes, of course it was conceived as an unpretentious entertainment pitched mainly to girls and young women. Yet that doesn't explain the nightmarish quality of the finished product.
User Score

Generally unfavorable- based on 74 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 28
  2. Negative: 19 out of 28
  1. There are to many good directors waiting for an opportunity to make great movies with great ideas, but Hollywood rather to make stupid movies like this one Full Review »
  2. As much as I love Diane Keaton and want to say that this is a worthwhile movie, I just can't bring myself to do it. The story has plot holes so large that a John Deer could fall in and never be found. The ridiculous sexual undertone is completely tacky and unnecessary. It's predictable, underdeveloped, and not at all clever. It's worth seeing if you happen to have Netflix, but it's not worth seeing in a theater. Full Review »
  3. 0
    How annoying can one woman be? Come back mother-in-law, all is forgiven. If you can stand to watch this movie without wanting to eject the DVD, player, TV and any female in the direct vicinity from the 10th floor of your apartment building, you are either a buddhist monk in anger-management class or someone has locked you into a cage and, tied you in a straightjacket and pinned-back you eyelids. I'm normally not given to killing women but this movie had me thinking about it. They should make a video game where you can shoot the cast. Full Review »