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100Among the many strengths of the sweetly touching Introducing the Dwights, a small gem from Australia unearthed at the Sundance Film Festival, is that Jean never becomes Godzilla.
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83Funny and appalling, doting and possessive, petty and selfless, raunchy and righteous, Jeannie is the pivot of the charming, garish, somewhat overwritten Australian comedy Introducing the Dwights.
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75It does what all good coming of age movies do, and that makes it a worthy and welcome entry into the genre.
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75Director Cherie Nowlan creates vivid personalities for the entire family and exposes the raw nerves of the biting humor.
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70The movie belongs to Blethyn, who takes a difficult, easily misunderstood role and gracefully cracks it open to reveal what's inside.
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70Warm and entertaining enough, with Brenda Blethyn doing a variation on her "Little Voice" vulgarian amid appealing support perfs.
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67Blethyn's performance belongs in another movie, not this bipolar comedy-drama.
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63The dynamic between mother and son is fascinating, with Blethyn creating a character who is more antagonist than villain.
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63No matter how good Blethyn is at playing up the sweet hurt of a woman who is well on the decline but never made it in the first place, your admiration for her shrieking-and-drinking breakdown scenes is likely to be tested after about the fifth go-round.
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63For those seeking an alternative to giant robots and flying wizards, there's an amusing Australian comedy that might be just the right panacea for blockbuster overload.
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The movie successfully balances the sentimental and bittersweet only about half the time. The performances are intelligent and well-crafted, and Blethyn is unmistakably a star performer, attracting attention like a vortex. But she's somewhat miscast here.
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50If you find a movie with a more annoying central performance than the one given by Brenda Blethyn in Cherie Nowlan's Introducing the Dwights, keep it to yourself.
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50The script's attempt to splice together a fumbling love story with a portrait of toxic personality disorder feels incongruous, like a serving of porridge flambé au whisky.
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50Sometimes Brenda Blethyn is content merely to nibble the scenery. In Introducing the Dwights, a drippy Australian family comedy caper, she chomps it to a pulp until we long for her straightforward monstrosity as a mother in "Little Voice."
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50A funny-sad, icky-sweet comedy of family dysfunction.
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50Amusing only for its performances, including those of Chittenden and Wilson. The cast cannot hide the movie's derivative shortcomings, which only remind us that we've seen better and funnier elsewhere.
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50Director Cherie Nowlan steers the comedy to a feel-good ending.
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50The film suffers for her (Brenda Blethyn) egocentrism.
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Jean's material is so flat-out awful it's amazing she gets hired at all, let alone that she once supposedly had headliner potential. It's a discrepancy that Introducing the Dwights never addresses.
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38Nothing about this movie works, not the title (it used to be called "Clubland "), not Blethyn's attempt to inject comedy into her rickety stereotype of a character.
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38Quirkiness is as essential to a small indie film as beef stock to French onion soup. But if you don't have enough of any other ingredient, you end up with a watery, barely edible broth.
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As Tim – a character rich in contradictions and psychological possibilities – Chittenden may as well be a cardboard cutout for all the emotional complexity he's able to muster.
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With its broad, toothless humor and ham-fisted fits of melodrama, this sitcom-grade embarrassment aims to dethrone "Muriel's Wedding" as the quirky Aussie feel-gooder of all time, except it hurts too much to watch.
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