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75The movie is much like a really long beer commercial - but a really dark one.
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70Ryder is devious and witchy, her eyes flashing, her crinkly voice developing knife edges. She gives an acidly brilliant performance as a desperate, lying woman. [24 Jan. 2011, p. 83]
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70What The Dilemma ultimately does best is create a platform for Vaughn to drag that iconic character of his into full-blown adulthood.
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70The ugly emotional mess is so respectfully handled that the story resonates far beyond its comic designs.
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67Howard surprises with this decidedly honest comedy-melodrama.
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67It never coheres as well as it should, but the film makes a fine mess.
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Jan 17, 201160Hit-and-miss for Howard. The tone flits, sometimes uncomfortably, from Vaughn-fuelled laugh-fest to relationship drama, but it's a winner compared to many of the clunkly comedies out there.
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Jan 12, 201160There are a few big laughs, but there are also long stretches in which nothing funny happens.
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58The dilemma of The Dilemma is that the conundrum at the center of the story isn't particularly hilarious.
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50I'm not sure whether Howard and screenwriter Allan Loeb are to be commended for aspiring to something odd and original, or condemned for a result that's so messy and miscellaneous.
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50As a rollicking comedy, it isn't.
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50An uneven story that tries too hard to be meaningful and not hard enough to be funny.
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50It's classic sitcom shtick, and The Dilemma is a painful reminder that director Ron Howard was trained in television.
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50Despite bursts of hilarity and an A-list cast, this is a dark, difficult, weirdly existential film - like some seriocomic spin on "I and Thou."
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Jan 13, 201150Vaughn is the film equivalent of a well-known novelist that no longer gets a good edit. He has the charismatic salesguy shtick down, but he needs a director who can rein him in.
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50Miles below the Woodman's class. It's possible that a more astringent script could have provided fuel for the actors and A-list director Ron Howard.
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50Ms. Ryder, playing the least sympathetic character with unflinching dignity and candor, is in many ways the reason The Dilemma works as well as it does.
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50The Dilemma is bad in a way that seems to parody all the ways in which a film like, say, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was good.
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50Unexpectedly sour, The Dilemma barely qualifies as a comedy.
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50The hijinx get deflating, yet the tension and genuine sense of investigation keep you involved.
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50The Dilemma downshifts from slapstick to melodrama and back so abruptly that it is at times jarring.
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50Not a particularly funny movie. Indeed, the true dilemma of this misguided seriocomedy lies in the filmmakers' confusion as to whether they're making a side-splitting bromance (nope) or an unsparing, warts-and-all look at screwed-up relationships (sort of).
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50An unsatisfying if often surprising experience, a less warm and fuzzy "Parenthood."
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40Perhaps the late Blake Edwards could have found a balance between slapstick and psychodrama, but Ron Howard can't get the pacing right, and Allan Loeb's script is even wordier than the one he wrote for "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."
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40How does one remain an unapologetic fan of Vaughn, abrasive though he is, even as his material fails him?
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40The Dilemma is so tone deaf to its themes that it thinks it's a light and slightly rude Vince Vaughn movie. It's not.
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38Vaughn and James are likable enough, and they would have real chemistry in, say, an all-out comedy.
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38What distinguishes The Dilemma in this genre is its resounding unfunnyness, its emotional dishonesty, and the general unlikability of its cast of characters.
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33The script by Allan Loeb careens all over the place without ever coming to rest on anything interesting.
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25Where the hell is the movie?