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100A movie that has an odd plot, quirky characters and a real edge, but it's not in-your-face, a re-invention of a genre or a smirky independent. It's different because it's flat-out great.
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100Sex holds in perfect tonal balance, and without cynicism, a brew of maliciously transgressive comedy and tender sympathy for its tortured characters, all gripped by terror of love, or sex, or both.
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A brilliantly written black comedy in the tradition of "To Die For" and "Flirting With Disaster," The Opposite of Sex was worth the wait.
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100This is a declaration of love: The Opposite of Sex is the smartest, edgiest, most human and handsomely acted romantic comedy in elephant years.
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100It's a terrific movie.
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Dedee is a great, entertaining caricature, an updated teen version of a forties-noir seductress and murderess -- Lana Turner without corsets... Ricci possesses a devastating way with a nasty line; she could curdle mother's milk from 30 paces.
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90[Roos's] dialogue (including an on-and-off voiceover by Ricci's pregnant, runaway sociopath) has a ringing clarity, his satire is low-key but quite real, and his actors mesh so perfectly you'd swear they rehearsed for months before shooting.
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88The kind of daring feature that doesn't open every Friday at the local multiplex; its frank, sometimes politically incorrect approach towards the act and politics of sex is refreshing.
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80What redeems the film's surface bitterness are sharp observations, laceratingly funny dialogue and something Dedee claims to find especially loathsome: a secret heart of gold.
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80A truly unformulaic comedy of lust and greed, a farce that seems to write itself, slap-happily, as it goes along.
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78Even some third-act deus ex machina scrambling can't homogenize the film's darkly cynical punch. Tough as nails and twice as hilarious, it's a remedy for summer treacle.
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75The De-Dee character subverts those expectations; she shoots the legs out from under the movie with perfectly timed zingers.
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Opposite attracts with its wit.
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The best scenes are of people talking -- and that's not just because the lines are so good. Roos doesn't seem to know what to do with his characters when they aren't blabbing.
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70The wonder of it all is how bitterly funny the complications are, especially as filtered through Dedee's monstrously self-centered voice-over.
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70For all the cynicism on the soundtrack and the occasional lapses in tone, this is a remarkably generous comedy.
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70Roos’ talent for vivid, jump-off-the-screen dialogue remains unquestioned, but his direction is considerably more spotty.
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63You'll laugh, though you might hate yourself in the morning.
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60It's an excellent date film, but it won't change your life.
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50For all Ricci's zingers, the actress who gets the most laughs here is Kudrow, who has an amazingly right-on offbeat comic sense and rhythm. Playing a bright, sexually repressed Indiana teacher, she displays priceless timing. [19 June 1998]
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50Uneven but always energetic and sometimes very funny.
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50The opposite of entertainment, a self-satisfied soap opera from hell. But anyone itchy to see Ricci in her fleshy glory will adore her femme fatale for the Jerry Springer age, a Stanwyck stoked on steroids and SweeTarts.
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42Traffics in the coyly blasphemous, aren't-we-dysfunctional family-disaster chic that has become the single most annoying trend in independent filmmaking.
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40Consistently clever without ever being funny. The film is so in love with its own carefully calibrated outrageousness that it doesn't bother to give its characters any depth beyond sitcom-level stereotypes.
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40This 1998 movie is essentially a compilation of things-aren't-what-they-seem games played on the viewer; all its little tricks, including Ricci's snide and smart-alecky voice-overs about movie conventions, are really old--except one. But it's not worth the wait.
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20Very much like sex. On second thought, make that bad sex. Actually, sexual assault is more like it. It will leave you feeling used, bruised, violated, mistrustful and unclean.
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BeauM.10One of the most flawless comedies to be released in American cinemas in the last thirty years. Brilliant.