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91Whenever Rupert Everett appears as a rich fellow who distinctly does not fancy ladies, it's a hysterical history lesson of the hilarious variety.
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88Considering the subject, ripe with titillating possibilities, it's surprisingly about as sexy as a week-old meat loaf. Tastefully directed by Tanya Wexler, it is a total joy from start to finish.
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75Hysteria is a one-joke movie, but when a joke is told this well, it doesn't matter.
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75Hysteria is a romantic comedy, not an erotic one.
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75The performances are spot on, and I especially like the spunky Gyllenhaal, who with this film and the underrated "Secretary" (2002), has built up a nice sideline in sexual exploration.
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May 18, 201275If director Tanya Wexler occasionally wanders into excess cutesiness...she makes up for it with a surplus of eye-opening historical details and a refreshing warmth for all her characters, even the ones whose views are clearly on the way out.
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May 12, 201270Hysteria, is a pleasurable diversion, even if it could have used a touch more spark in the writing.
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67For a film that shows the folly of failing to take the female orgasm seriously, Hysteria ends up taking a silly angle on a potentially fascinating slice of secret history.
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65The picture is at least spirited, a jaunty trifle that's low on eroticism but high on cartoony coquettishness. Like the little motorized whatsit that is its subject, it does have its charms.
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63Hysteria never gets too preachy or ponderous, and there's something in the film to educate even the most learned viewer.
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63It's cute. So is the movie. If it never rises to greatness, it may be because it's also a fairly formulaic romcom.
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63The comic elements of this semi-factual tale are heavy-handed, and a key romance falls flat. Despite its titillating subject matter, Hysteria is only mildly stimulating. The final third of the story meanders during a tedious trial and clumsy speechifying.
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63Hysteria's "hook" is that it chronicles the development of one of the 20th century's most popular home appliances: the vibrator. However, although the details surrounding the deplorable state of women's medicine during the Victorian era are intriguing, the central story - a romantic comedy between a progressive woman and a forward-thinking doctor - is flaccid.
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May 13, 201263Hysteria's happy ending isn't the type that calls for a cigarette, and it certainly isn't the one the film deserves.
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60Lightly humorous, well performed and not nearly as smutty as you might imagine. The earth may not move, but there are tingles of pleasure along the way.
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60The joy of Hysteria, like the joy of certain other things, isn't necessarily rooted in the element of surprise. Rather, it's in the pleasure of the path taken to get to that crescendo.
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60Hysteria, a disappointingly limp ode to the invention of the vibrator, plays like a Merchant Ivory Production of "Portnoy's Complaint."
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60While a delicate topic would seem to require a delicate touch, Wexler goes more for cheeky entertainment. To some degree, it works.
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60Though the film is a fairly plastic British period piece with all the intimacy of a Hitachi Wand, the script captures some delicate and intelligent facets of a tensely conflicted era.
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58Even the humor is played too broadly – another notch and we'd be in "Monty Python" territory, though not half as witty.
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50Rather born to wear a frock coat, Dancy shares the stammer-blush, winning-grin methodology of countryman Hugh Grant, only with more probity and better posture.
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50As a sex-education comedy, Hysteria is flaccid, forced and unfunny.
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50The problem with Hysteria is that it keeps patting itself and us on the back for knowing better.
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50There is no denying that every time Gyllenhaal steps into a frame she takes a sleeping movie and wakes it up.
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50In fact, the problem with the film is that, despite an excellent cast that includes Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy and Rupert Everett, it doesn't really know what it is. A little of this, a little of that and by the time it's done, it adds up to not much at all.
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50The movie lacks wit.
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50Silly, featherweight comedy.
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50Dancy manages a few sly moments, and Everett is as ever a scene-stealer, if barely recognizable under a beard and altered features, and with a raspy voice. But the estimable Pryce and Jones are wasted, along with many other fine thesps, while Gyllenhaal works too gratingly hard in an already strained role.
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Sep 21, 201240Gyllenhaal rises above the tedium; sadly, not far enough. Great English accent, though.
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40The whole thing, shot in the manner of "Masterpiece Theatre," with a flaccid musical score to match, is itself hopelessly antiquated, greeting with very British giggles, and without a trace of honest curiosity, the needs of the women it seeks to honor. [21 May 2012, p.81]
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40There's nothing strictly wrong with any of this, except for the fact that even a buttoned-down period piece like "Topsy-Turvy" feels sexier.
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30Proceeds as a tedious, clumsy diddle, constantly reminding viewers how much progress has been made since the Victorian era.
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May 17, 201225Unfortunately, Hysteria is much closer in its effects to a more significant and much larger 19th-century invention. Like the locomotive, this costume drama proceeds noisily and methodically toward a destination that is agreed upon from the outset. Good orgasms and good movies generally offer surprises; good trains do not.