| 80 |
Variety
Deborah Young
Charmingly setting aside glamour for a turn at pure acting, Nicole Kidman zings up the already zingy script of Birthday Girl.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
Mark Holcomb
It may not be particularly innovative, but the film's crisp, unaffected style and air of gentle longing make it unexpectedly rewarding.
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| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
Nicole Kidman -- continuing the string of remarkable performances that have followed "Eyes Wide Shut" -- finds plenty of fodder in the long-delayed Birthday Girl. A grimy thriller with a wicked streak of humor.
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| 75 |
USA Today
Mike Clark
The actress may get an Oscar nomination for the wrong movie -- "Moulin Rouge" over "The Others" -- but it would be a double misfortune for audiences to overlook a performance that boosts its movie from moderate to memorable.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Rare is the movie that arrives without fanfare -- that sneaks between the cracks, pops up relatively unheralded on the big screen, and takes the viewer by delighted surprise. Well, check the moon for blue because Birthday Girl is just such a picture.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Black comedies are rare enough. Birthday Girl is a member of an even rarer species, the black romantic comedy.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
It's a slight, old-fashioned B movie, the last thing you would expect from an actress coming off a breakout year, but it has a charm and freshness we don't see much these days.
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| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Butterworth guides us through the world of chaos and romantic confusion he's created as if it's the most natural place in the world. After a while, we actually believe it is.
|
| 70 |
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Keep your eye on Kidman, whose kinky, kittenish performance turns unexpected emotional corners that pull you up short.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Still, it's worth checking out if only to see Kidman immolate everything else on screen through sheer sexy charisma. Tom who?
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| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Ellen A. Kim
The good news is that Kidman's the best thing in this rather subdued film: sexy, coy and even a bit funny. The bad news is that the movie itself is unlikely to register very long on anyone's radar.
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| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Staff (Not Credited)
If British writer-director Jez Butterworth had let his sophomore picture get as dirty as Kidman's game recklessness invited -- she started this before ''Moulin Rouge'' and ''The Others'' -- he would have served up a tasty piece of cake.
|
| 63 |
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
The romantic comedy doesn't have much, but it has Kidman.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
Loren King
This bizarre, uneven comedy is notable mostly for the unsettling presence of Nicole Kidman in full, kinky, sex-kitten mode.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A paper-thin wish-fulfillment comedy about escaping small-town repressions and blasting conformity.
|
| 63 |
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The movie runs out of steam before its finish, but she (Kidman) doesn't.
|
| 63 |
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
Won't make you forget Kidman's better work, but it's not a film you long to excise from your memory.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Kidman accomplishes a remarkable feat of transformation, adopting not only an accent, but a slightly seedy, faintly feral demeanor that almost makes you forget her icy good looks and fashion model's figure.
|
| 60 |
Film Threat
Tim Merrill
Starts out as a first-rate chick movie and winds up a second-rate guy movie. But if this somehow proves to be a formula for the perfect date movie, then Kidman is even more brilliant than we thought.
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| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Quickly devolves into a violent thriller that resolves itself in sadomasochistic romance.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Ultimately, Birthday Girl disintegrates into a fairly routine -- and brutal -- caper movie.
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| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
There is a curious problem with Birthday Girl, hard to put your finger on: The movie is kind of sour. It wants to be funny and a little nasty, it wants to surprise us and then console us, but what it mostly does is make us restless.
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
See it to be reminded (if you need further reminding) of this actress' remarkable range. Otherwise, take a pass.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
This breathless demi-noir has so much bounce that we barely get any time to mull over the gaping holes in its moth-eaten plot. It is competent but extremely slight.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
It's that sense of ardor that's missing from Ben Chaplin's performance in Birthday Girl.
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| 40 |
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
There's nothing wrong with beguiling star turns, but I wish this one had been surrounded by more of a movie. Birthday Girl is a harmless trifle that makes 93 minutes go by as if they were hardly more than an hour and a half.
|
| 40 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Uneven, not particularly inspired comic thriller.
|
| 30 |
LA Weekly
Manohla Dargis
Kidman, who speaks Russian for much of the movie, turns in a technically impeccable performance, but the movie gets far more out of her than she out of it.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Between bad hair and tonal irregularity, the movie doesn't give you much to like.
|
| 30 |
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
The film's Russians are all played by French and Australian actors. Too bad Butterworth didn't find a Russian to play the Brit. That would have made the inauthenticity complete.
|
| 20 |
Chicago Reader
Lisa Alspector
The most subtly revolting aspect of the movie is how it manages to exploit violence for cheap thrills, in part by equating submission with love.
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| 10 |
New Times (L.A.)
Gregory Weinkauf
It's just that this clunky, inane vehicle sputters barely a few feet down its quaint English highway before you want to bid it "do zvidániya, dumb-ass!"
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