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100One of the best pictures so far this year, marking a high point of Rudolph's career and reconfirming the extraordinary talent Mr. Campbell has shown in earlier films. Dentistry will never seem the same.
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100Don't let unpleasant personal dental associations stand in the way of seeing a luminous specimen of independent filmmaking.
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100Think of easy jazz or soft soul, with Rudolph's cinematic improvisations soaring and circling the melody while adding quirky variations.
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90While it's Dave's madly humming brain that propels the film, Davis, whose every glance is a short story in itself, makes Dana's internal crisis equally resonant.
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90A stylish work from an accomplished, sophisticated filmmaker that bristles with intelligence and gleams with Scott's and Davis' multifaceted, astutely judged portrayals.
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90This portrait of a failing marriage is one of the summer's great discoveries, and a marvel of mercurial intimacy.
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90Small, quiet movie that imperceptibly takes its viewers by their throats and doesn't let go
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88Scott and Davis could not be better. You're in for something special.
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88An excellent adaptation of a wonderful work of fiction (The Age of Grief).
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88May not be the best movie ever made about the perils of family life, but it is among the most ruthlessly comic.
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80Refreshingly uncategorizable: It’s somewhere between a marital-discord drama and a mystery thriller, but it also has its madcap moments.
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80With Scott playing the perfect foil to Leary's exasperated sage, the fantasy sequences are hilariously caustic, but as they accumulate more rapidly, the distinction between real and imagined situations becomes disturbingly vague.
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80Intensely appealing.
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80It's not a flawless adaptation, but it's a gutsy and deeply affecting one: The filmmakers manage to jazz up Smiley's tempo without losing her melancholy tone; and they find a way--without being untrue to the book--to make the stubbornly recessive protagonist seem a dynamo on the screen.
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80Roundly entertaining.
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75Tries hard to be a good film, but if it had relaxed a little, it might have been great.
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75A surprisingly insightful, non-judgmental meditation on a troubled marriage-with-kids.
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75A melancholy, well-observed film.
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75Intelligently written and beautifully acted throughout, it’s a good, and rare, example of what we used to refer to as a movie for adults. Adults, be advised.
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75The climax, however, is far superior here, open-ended and ambiguous and neatly linked to this film's recurring metaphor: Teeth, of course, which "outlast everything," which survive the death of the body just as marriage can survive the demise of love. They both endure, yellowed and rootless.
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75Campbell Scott creates a new movie anti-hero -- the weak silent type -- and goes all the way with it in The Secret Lives of Dentists.
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75A rarely honest, funny movie.
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70Unlike those in the not dissimilar “American Beauty,” Dentists' characters are needier than the actors who play them -- and therein lies the problem.
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70Director Alan Rudolph achieves fresh as well as humorous insights into family life and strategies for keeping a damaged relationship from expiring. But a tiresome final act proves trying.
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70It has almost no story: its claim on our interest is in the texture of family life, which is what really fills the screen.
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70The film is equally good in handling the discrepancy between skilled and unskilled parents.
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67It all adds up to a portrait in decency, which isn’t nearly as sexy as the title would suggest.
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67Campbell Scott and Hope Davis, both of whom work with such subtlety and depth, rescue the film from Rudolph's seemingly native inability to keep it steadily on course.
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63Leary's presence quickly grows tiresome, and The Secret Lives of Dentists would have been a better movie without him. But Scott and Davis keep you interested in the Hursts' dilemma
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63Ultimately, it's a compassionate view of marriage and its stressors. But the filmmaker and actors do their jobs only too well. Watching "Secret Lives" can be as uncomfortable as sitting in the dentist's chair.
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63Lacking a solid narrative beyond the worsening marital crisis, this humor-flecked domestic drama ends up relying heavily on directorial tricks such as splashes of magic realism, giving it a self-satisfied air that quickly becomes grating.
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63Scott and Davis bring heart-rending sadness and telling detail to their roles, and imbue Secret Lives with something real and true.
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60Director Alan Rudolph, whose reputation rests on ensemble pieces, lets Scott's performance -- as skilled as his pyrotechnical turn in "Roger Dodger" (2002), but composed entirely of subtle notes -- anchor the film.
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60The cast are terrific, but byt he end, the film is struggling to stay together as much as the family it depicts.
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40A very dull movie.