| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
Turns the kleig lights around to produce a wry and dead-on commentary on the film industry and the journalists who cover it.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
Terrifically funny romantic comedy, is a slam-dunk for Julia Roberts, the Michael Jordan of cuteness.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
The result is a back-lot studio tour that's not exactly good-natured, but terrific fun and it gives the ensemble cast plenty of clowning opportunities.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
Surprisingly funny and sweet, despite some missed comic opportunities and curious casting choices.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
At its heart the film wants nothing more than to make you giggle, and at that it succeeds admirably.
|
| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Though an uneven, often confused, mixed bag -- the movie gradually comes together to be a fairly hilarious inside-Hollywood farce.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
You keep waiting for it to go into orbit, to be really fizzy and outrageous, like the screwball farce it wants to be. Instead, the film settles for the merely serviceable.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
This movie is a cookie. A slightly stale generic-brand cookie.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Christopher Walken has the best moments in the whole thing, portraying the wacked-out auteur of the Gwen-and-Eddie vehicle. Sadly, he's only in America's Sweethearts a few hilarious minutes.
|
| 63 |
Miami Herald
For the farce it so desperately wants to be, the film often feels slack and too reliant on so-so punch lines for laughs.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
All these good actors and all Crystal's sass and witty candor can't bring back the heyday of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges. Or even, most of the time, their off-days.
|
| 60 |
Wall Street Journal
Ed Epstein
Amusing enough, especially with its uniquely credible premise of a media fraud, to recommend.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
As enjoyable as this film is in parts, it's not nearly as successful as a whole. Enormously engaging in its opening segments, it's unable to sustain that good feeling over the long haul.
|
| 58 |
Portland Oregonian
Barry Johnson
Surprise! Crystal has given himself most of the best lines, though he also allows a Doberman to have its way with him.
|
| 50 |
Newsweek
Resoundingly so-so.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
While the film delivers some sharp dialogue, overall it's soft and slightly unfocused.
|
| 50 |
New York Magazine
Too eager to please to be truly dislikable, and Roberts and Cusack have a fine rapport.
|
| 50 |
Slate
The movie is a polished muddle, fitfully amusing but with no spine.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
America's Sweethearts recycles "Singin' in the Rain" but lacks the sassy genius of that 1952 musical, which is still the best comedy ever made about Hollywood.
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
No excuse for the bitterness and crudity in America's Sweethearts -- a noxious combination that erodes the 1930s and '40s screwball-comedy armature on which this mirthless movie is based.
|
| 40 |
Variety
Begins as a smartly promising, gently farcical comedy of manners and ends as sourly and haphazardly as the lives it is poking fun at.
|
| 40 |
Mr. Showbiz
It's dull, two-dimensional, and totally toothless.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
Like a bottle of lukewarm Champagne -- an expensive one, judging by the label -- America's Sweethearts opens with a promising burst of effervescence and quickly goes flat.
|
| 30 |
Salon.com
It's mostly terrible. The movie has no sparkle, no charm, nothing to sweep us off our feet.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
A lackluster screwball comedy.
|
| 30 |
Rolling Stone
Chockablock with things we're not supposed to notice: that Roberts is wasted; that she and Cusack have no characters to play, so it's virtually impossible to understand why she loves him or vice versa; that the script provides comedy without bite and romance without resonance.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
The sparks don't fly -- they fall down and they can't get up.
|
| 25 |
Christian Science Monitor
Falls flat on screen, weighed down by far-fetched plot twists.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
This is the downside of Roberts' giant success and her dazzling ability to charm: Every time she goes plain, as she did in the little-seen "Mary Reilly" and "Michael Collins," our princess simply fizzles.
|
| 20 |
LA Weekly
The film isn't just banal, it's aggressively, arrogantly banal.
|
| 20 |
New Times (L.A.)
Obnoxious, transparent cornball comedy.
|
| 20 |
Chicago Reader
Overwritten by Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan, overdirected by Joe Roth, overplayed by most of the cast, yet typically undernourished.
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