Metacritic Film

Introducing the Dwights

Starring Brenda Blethyn, Khan Chittenden, Emma Booth, Richard Wilson, Frankie J. Holden, Rebecca Gibney, Philip Quast, and Katie Wall

MPAA RATING: R for sexual content and language

Warner Independent Pictures
Drama
105 minutes | Color
Australia
Released In Theaters July 4, 2007

Introducing the Dwights is a comedy about a mother who tries to come between her son and his coming of age. Tim's mom, Jean, is a bawdy and risqué comedienne still hoping to make it big. His brother Mark helps their mother rehearse for shows. Together, they inhabit a non-traditional household where chaos is the norm, the music is always on, and Jean's larger-than-life personality takes center stage. When Tim meets and falls for Jill, his home becomes a combat zone as his mother fears this new girl, whose name she refuses to remember, will "break up" the unique family unit she's tried so hard to keep together. In this quirky and oftentimes touching tale, Tim must learn to manage the emotions of the women of his life without losing himself in the process. (Warner Independent Pictures)

WRITTEN BY
Keith Thompson

DIRECTED BY
Cherie Nowlan

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

50 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 San Francisco Chronicle
Among the many strengths of the sweetly touching Introducing the Dwights, a small gem from Australia unearthed at the Sundance Film Festival, is that Jean never becomes Godzilla.
83 Portland Oregonian
Funny and appalling, doting and possessive, petty and selfless, raunchy and righteous, Jeannie is the pivot of the charming, garish, somewhat overwritten Australian comedy Introducing the Dwights.
75 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Director Cherie Nowlan creates vivid personalities for the entire family and exposes the raw nerves of the biting humor.
75 ReelViews
It does what all good coming of age movies do, and that makes it a worthy and welcome entry into the genre.
70 Variety
Warm and entertaining enough, with Brenda Blethyn doing a variation on her "Little Voice" vulgarian amid appealing support perfs.
70 Los Angeles Times
The movie belongs to Blethyn, who takes a difficult, easily misunderstood role and gracefully cracks it open to reveal what's inside.
67 Baltimore Sun
Blethyn's performance belongs in another movie, not this bipolar comedy-drama.
63 Miami Herald
The dynamic between mother and son is fascinating, with Blethyn creating a character who is more antagonist than villain.
63 New York Post
No matter how good Blethyn is at playing up the sweet hurt of a woman who is well on the decline but never made it in the first place, your admiration for her shrieking-and-drinking breakdown scenes is likely to be tested after about the fifth go-round.
63 USA Today
For those seeking an alternative to giant robots and flying wizards, there's an amusing Australian comedy that might be just the right panacea for blockbuster overload.
50 The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The script's attempt to splice together a fumbling love story with a portrait of toxic personality disorder feels incongruous, like a serving of porridge flambé au whisky.
50 Chicago Reader
Director Cherie Nowlan steers the comedy to a feel-good ending.
50 Chicago Tribune Sid Smith
The movie successfully balances the sentimental and bittersweet only about half the time. The performances are intelligent and well-crafted, and Blethyn is unmistakably a star performer, attracting attention like a vortex. But she's somewhat miscast here.
50 Washington Post
Amusing only for its performances, including those of Chittenden and Wilson. The cast cannot hide the movie's derivative shortcomings, which only remind us that we've seen better and funnier elsewhere.
50 The New York Times
A funny-sad, icky-sweet comedy of family dysfunction.
50 The Onion (A.V. Club)
The film suffers for her (Brenda Blethyn) egocentrism.
50 New York Daily News
If you find a movie with a more annoying central performance than the one given by Brenda Blethyn in Cherie Nowlan's Introducing the Dwights, keep it to yourself.
50 Entertainment Weekly
Sometimes Brenda Blethyn is content merely to nibble the scenery. In Introducing the Dwights, a drippy Australian family comedy caper, she chomps it to a pulp until we long for her straightforward monstrosity as a mother in "Little Voice."
40 Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman
Jean's material is so flat-out awful it's amazing she gets hired at all, let alone that she once supposedly had headliner potential. It's a discrepancy that Introducing the Dwights never addresses.
38 Boston Globe
Nothing about this movie works, not the title (it used to be called "Clubland "), not Blethyn's attempt to inject comedy into her rickety stereotype of a character.
38 Charlotte Observer
Quirkiness is as essential to a small indie film as beef stock to French onion soup. But if you don't have enough of any other ingredient, you end up with a watery, barely edible broth.
30 Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
As Tim – a character rich in contradictions and psychological possibilities – Chittenden may as well be a cardboard cutout for all the emotional complexity he’s able to muster.
30 Village Voice Aaron Hillis
With its broad, toothless humor and ham-fisted fits of melodrama, this sitcom-grade embarrassment aims to dethrone "Muriel's Wedding" as the quirky Aussie feel-gooder of all time, except it hurts too much to watch.

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