Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 35 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 49 Ratings

  • Starring: Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall
  • Summary: Kate has a lot on her mind. There’s the ethics problem of buying furniture on the cheap at estate sales and marking it up at her trendy Manhattan store. There’s the materialism problem of not wanting her teenage daughter to want the expensive things that Kate wants. There’s the marriage probe problem of sharing a partnership in parenting, business, and life with her husband Alex but sensing doubt nibbling at the foundations. And there’s Kate’s free-floating 21st century malaise—the problem of how to live well and be a good person when poverty, homelessness, and sadness are always right outside the door.
    Plus, there’s the neighbors: cranky, elderly Andra and the two granddaughters who look after her. As Kate, Alex, and Abby interact with the people next door, with each other, and with their New York surroundings, a complex mix of animosity, friendship, deception, guilt, and love plays out with both sharp humor and pathos. (Sony Pictures Classics)
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 29 out of 35
  2. Negative: 1 out of 35
  1. Sophisticated comedies have gone out of fashion, largely because Hollywood finds it easier and more profitable to simply gross out moviegoers. But Please Give has real class -- and for that it deserves our gratitude.
  2. It's guilt that gives life, shape and depth to this uncommonly perceptive film.
  3. She has real sympathy--characters that might have been brittle, mockable creations in another writer-director’s hands gain resonance here. But the filmmaker also might have very little to say apart from the way guilt enters into life, and then suddenly recedes.
  4. 25
    At a time when every penny counts, where do they come up with the money to finance a movie this boring?

See all 35 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 22
  2. Negative: 2 out of 22
  1. DWillyB
    9
    I don't normally have much use for this type of film, I was left cold by this writer/director's "Friends With Money," but the ensemble performs flawlessly (directed to the height of their known capabilities) with a unique script that really has something to say, is moving and funny as hell. I can give it the highest compliment in that I've been thinking and talking about it all the following day now, and would like to see it again. Collapse
  2. This has to be one of the most underrated comedies ever. So pure, perfect characters, hilarious dialogues, so down to earth and completely different from any other comedy i've seen... not the best in its type but definitely deserved more attention! Expand
  3. j30
    7
    Funny and engaging movie of two worlds colliding after lose.
  4. TedB
    4
    Sweet, but ultimately boring and inconsequential.

See all 22 User Reviews

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