- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100Delightfully unpredictable, hilarious comedy with wonderful performances that tug at your heart in ways that utterly transcend gender labels.
-
90For an American film it is a groundbreaker in exploring the realm of sexual fluidity, and it does so with wit, wisdom and in a completely entertaining fashion.
-
90An edgy exploration of role playing and sexual choice in a climate where all options are acceptable.
-
90It's funny and human and really pretty damned wonderful, all at once.
-
88Delivers that rare combination of winning traits. It's a low-key comedy with a risque hook -- a seemingly straight woman dabbles in lesbianism -- yet it maintains an old-fashioned faith in literate dialogue, believable behavior and themes that reach beyond the plot points.
-
88A pitch-perfect gem.
-
88It's a charmer.
-
88The screenplay is written with a thinking audience in mind, the dialogue sparkles, the characters leap off the screen in full three-dimensionality, and the cliches are kept to a bare minimum.
-
88This movie is about the survival of the open-minded. As far as current American independents go, it's the fastest and the funniest.
-
80Westfeldt and Juergensen keep Kissing Jessica Stein bright and funny and loose.
-
80These women are smart, funny and wonderfully real, traits that one might safely attribute to Westfeldt and Juergensen, who also wrote the screenplay.
-
80Westfeldt and Juergensen are smart, sexy knockouts, finding just the right mix of fun and tenderness in their writing and performances.
-
80Pays off in laugh-out-loud lines, adorably ditsy but heartfelt performances, and sparkling, bittersweet dialogue that cuts to the chase of the modern girl's dilemma.
-
80The comedy gets better, and more unpredictable, as it goes, and so do the performances.
-
80Pure pleasure. A fresh take on sex and the single girl, this buoyant, well-crafted romantic comedy blends pitch-perfect performances with deliciously smart writing.
-
80A small independent feature that's everything an independent feature -- small or big -- should be.
-
80The performers bring freshness to what could have been cliched roles.
-
75Right now, she's like the grade-school girl at the spin-the-bottle party who changes the rules when the bottle points at her.
-
75While this slightly edgy comedy has moments of offbeat charm, it would carry more conviction if the acting were richer and the characters focused on more sophisticated attitudes and ambitions.
-
75Not about sex; it's about leaps of faith, at work, in love, in life.
-
Charming and witty, it's also somewhat clumsy.
-
75Small, sharply written, incisive comedy examines, with smarts and style and sexiness, the very nature of modern romance - gay, straight, and in between.
-
75Men may be gay by nature, but women are lesbians by choice -- for them, it's a simple matter of trading up. Such is the implied message of Kissing Jessica Stein.
-
70While the film missteps in a few small places, it's charm, wit, and heart make Kissing Jessica Stein one of the few "must see" films of the year; quite an accomplishment for novice filmmakers.
-
70It all works on the level of a sprightly sitcom: lesbianism for the Lucy-and-Ethel crowd.
-
70Smoothly narrated and is packed with some wonderful quirks. Nonetheless, it could have taken more to heart the lovely paradox it reserves for Jessica: that we most become ourselves in our capacity to surprise ourselves.
-
70This is possibly the funniest lesbian romp since "Go Fish."
-
67All too content to be a comedy of surfaces and stereotypes. And because, for all the novelty of the bisexual romantic angle, there's something about Jessica, her New York-singleton ticks and her Jewish-family tocks, that feels...old.
-
67Something doesn't quite gel in the end.
-
63One of the film's strengths is that nobody -- male, female, gay, straight or Jewish mother -- is reduced to stereotype.
-
60Eventually Stein's habit of dodging its own issues grows frustrating.
-
58Westfeldt becomes irritating. That's one of the film's points, but it's made a little too well.
-
50The film is relentlessly peppy, often quite funny, sometimes a bit too convinced of its own adorableness and ultimately as smoothly reassuring as a TV sitcom.
-
50Amusing but extremely derivative.
-
40Starts out as a lark, but veers into grittier, more emotionally complex territory -- just like a real relationship -- that the film doesn't have the chops to sustain.
-
40The actual finale, which so betrays what's come before it that it leaves one walking out of the theater holding a grudge against what was.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
There are no user reviews yet.