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88Kline is one of the rare major actors not afraid to look like hell. And given his character's plight, his willingness to get physically unpleasant matches the emotion he brings to the part.
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75This movie lets you feel something. Like George's house, if not his life, it's built well and full of heart.
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70Works as a heart-warming, involving experience.
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70Just when this sunshiny and affectionate comedy is beginning to bloom, the inevitable, tear-jerking conclusion closes off the fun like a Venetian blind blocking the light. (29 Oct 2001, p.93)
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63Because it is slick and classy and good to look at, and the actors are well within their range of competence, you can enjoy the movie on a made-for-TV level, but you wish it had been smarter and tougher.
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63Makes for a compelling comedy-drama about family ties. It's only when the cancer takes center stage that the movie feels like a wash.
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63An overwrought, ramshackle weepie that really doesn't deserve Kline's Oscar-caliber work.
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63Elevated beyond its cutesy contrivances and mawkishness by some extraordinarily good performances.
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60With nothing in the way of inspiration coming on either the writing or directing end, it's up to the actors to maintain audience interest and emotional engagement, and two members of the cast rise to the occasion: Kline and Christensen.
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60It's a pleasant movie, written with care for the characters. But as the film's title suggests, scriptwriter Mark Andrus has made too obvious and clunky a metaphor of George's house.
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58Fortunately, Winkler has a good cast.
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58The real bottom line here is that the character just doesn't make much sense.
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50Kline, in particular, has the spark and know-how to overcome some awfully belabored writing and situations.
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50This one is nearly as bad as it gets, suggesting that all the wrong people were wielding the sledgehammers here.
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50I heard a moviegoer calls this drama "a feel-good `American Beauty,'" which is like saying "a hot bowl of gazpacho" -- the point has completely been missed.
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50The phrase "Everything happens for a reason" is heard more than once, a risibly simplistic cliché that not only stands as this film's hackneyed theme but also as a surprisingly honest confession as to just how calculated the entire film is.
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50There's nothing particularly wrong with this movie, except that it's too nice for words.
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50A family melodrama that becomes less authentic as it progressively takes itself more seriously.
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50Mark Andrus's script is built on soggy sandstone, and Irwin Winkler's bulldozer direction keeps unearthing toxic epiphanies. That's not to say the movie isn't occasionally moving, as well as exasperating.
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50Built with fine materials and boasts a gorgeous ocean view. Unfortunately the family dramedy's design is overblown and the construction is pretty flimsy.
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40There's really nothing more to this by-the-numbers, ailment-of-the-week fodder dressed up with a classy cast.
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40This family melodrama is as subtle as a load of bricks and occasionally as painful, but it offers two of the most finely tuned acting performances yet this year.
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40Forget about cancer -- it's weepy movies like this that are the real scourge.
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40Christensen is the only jolt of excitement in this turgid soap opera.
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40Doesn't trust the audience enough to keep from laying on the schmaltz.
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40Will the movie end in an orgy of sentiment? Why do we bother to ask?
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40Like hundreds of doomed movie protagonists before him, the hero of Life as a House doesn't have long to live. By the second reel, you may find yourself wishing his time on the planet was even shorter.
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40Big, schmaltzy melodrama with mini melodramas.
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38Kline will break your heart, while the rest of the movie will just make you sick.
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33No worse than any disease-of-the-week TV movie, and no more moralistic than any Lifetime drama. But it's no better, either, and it ought to be.
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30So feel-sniffly-good it could make you revisit lunch.
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25Life as a House mounts a brutally insensitive attack on its audience's sensitivities.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 18
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Mixed: 4 out of 18
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Negative: 2 out of 18
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CoreyS.9