| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In the end, dark comedy drives the film, but it's overwhelmed by a desire to be liked, really liked.
|
| 60 |
TNT RoughCut
Generally engaging.
|
| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
To do this kind of satire successfully, you need the kind of merciless and unrelenting wit of films such as Gus Van Sant's "To Die For" or John Huston's "Prizzi's Honor."
|
| 50 |
Dallas Observer
Generally engaging.
|
| 50 |
Time
You don't quite believe that a smart woman would spend so much time on such a dumb mission.
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
Unfortunately, whenever Beautiful threatens to work as parody, it veers uncomfortably into pop psychology.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Sally Field has actually made a likeable movie.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
This film's wise and compassionate view is that, for many young women of limited opportunities, winning a beauty contest represents their best hope.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
Beautiful is a mess, but not without interest.
|
| 38 |
San Francisco Examiner
SORRY, SALLY. I didn't like it. I really didn't like it.
|
| 38 |
USA Today
Burdened with so many poky scenes that it approaches the level of the distributor's "Drowning Mona" and "Whipped," both candidates for the year's worst.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
Rarely does a movie go so thoroughly wrong in so many ways.
|
| 38 |
Boston Globe
The tame, confused script eventually sinks the film, although Field shows skill directing actors.
|
| 33 |
Entertainment Weekly
Not one female character escapes mockery or patronizing.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
Sally Field's direction is pedestrian, though she does manage to get winning performances out of Driver and Eisenberg.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
(Driver) is stuck in a mess of a movie that suffers from awkward writing, a plot with major disconnects in plausibility, an annoyingly screechy kid character and cheesy production values.
|
| 25 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It's a movie with so many inconsistencies, improbabilities, unanswered questions and unfinished characters that we have to suspend not only disbelief but also intelligence.
|
| 25 |
Miami Herald
The trouble starts with the script, and it doesn't end there.
|
| 25 |
Chicago Tribune
Marc Caro
Spends its first three-quarters confronting us with one of the most dislikable characters in recent memory.
|
| 25 |
New York Daily News
About the only plausible element in the entire movie is bratty Vanessa's loathing of "Aunt" Mona, whom she sees as a vacuous over-reacher.
|
| 22 |
Mr. Showbiz
Beautiful it ain't, but it is kind of cute.
|
| 20 |
LA Weekly
Made with the slick, shorthand complacency of a TV movie, Beautiful is so overstuffed with contrivance, you can hardly breathe.
|
| 20 |
Variety
There's no particular reason to see this disappointingly trivial picture on the bigscreen.
|
| 20 |
Austin Chronicle
Marrit Ingman
A tone-deaf dramedy whose need to please is a pain in the neck.
|
| 10 |
Washington Post
Insufferably cloying experience.
|
| 10 |
The New York Times
Teeters from a noisy sitcom (only one step removed from "The Beverly Hillbillies") to brickbat satire until it collapses in a pool of redemptive mush.
|
| 10 |
Washington Post
It manages to find an almost pitch-perfect accumulation of ill-matched tones, sheer grotesquerie, near-heroic absurdity and self-canceling folly.
|
| 0 |
Village Voice
Surpassing Dan Aykroyd's "Nothing but Trouble" as the most astoundingly atrocious walrus-flop of a directorial debut by a languishing actor ever contrived, Sally Field's Beautiful.
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