| 75 |
New York Post
Isn't great, but it's an enjoyable if overly discreet and romanticized look at a long-vanished show-business world.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
A surprisingly warm and engaging entertainment - brassy, schmaltzy, funny.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Unexpectedly entertaining, if you're willing to put up with the picture's stagy look, over-the-top moods, and heavy doses of vulgarity.
|
| 70 |
Salon.com
A cupcake of a movie, a sweet and lightweight little thing that's all but served up in a ruffled paper cup.
|
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Ah, what glorious casting!
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Russel Smith
An ideal diversion for one of those evenings when low expectations feel more like a state of grace than a surrender to vice.
|
| 67 |
Portland Oregonian
It's peppy and cheesy and filled with life and humor in just the way, you imagine, that Susann might have enjoyed.
|
| 65 |
TNT RoughCut
Sarah Raskin
As brain candy goes, Isn't She Great is just that and a little bit more.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
Intermittently funny.
|
| 60 |
Film.com
Good enough in spots to make you wish it could have sustained its campier inclinations.
|
| 42 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Though it does present the facts of Susann's life, it skims them so quickly and with such glorious glee that we never get a sense of who this woman really was.
|
| 40 |
Newsweek
Ann-Rebecca Laschever
Midler's performance does not stand out. She remains very much Bette Midler.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
Contains several profanely amusing moments, but they don't add up to much.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
Curiously bland and flavorless.
|
| 40 |
Rolling Stone
Just isn't enough.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
Moira MacDonald
What on earth is Stockard Channing doing in this mess?
|
| 40 |
Village Voice
Aspires to be both stylish and coarse, camp and vulgar -- which is pretty much how Bette Midler plays it.
|
| 40 |
Mr. Showbiz
A watery cocktail of second-rate, Ab Fab-style bitchery and shameless schmaltz.
|
| 38 |
USA Today
A bottom-rung Bette Midler vehicle disguised as a biopic of novelist Jacqueline Susann, the movie is a wannabe satire shackled by misplaced reverence.
|
| 38 |
San Francisco Examiner
Second-banana material.
|
| 38 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Leaves an unintentional unpleasant aftertaste.
|
| 38 |
Chicago Tribune
A flabbergasting waste of time and talent.
|
| 30 |
The New York Times
If you're looking for laughs, give "Valley of the Dolls" another read instead.
|
| 30 |
LA Weekly
Lame comic-strip excuse for a biopic.
|
| 30 |
Variety
Isn't even unintentionally funny enough to qualify as guilty pleasure a la "Valley of the Dolls."
|
| 25 |
Chicago Sun-Times
A flat and peculiar film.
|
| 25 |
Miami Herald
Just plain bad. Really, really bad.
|
| 20 |
Slate
It used to be that Midler was a life force, but whenever she tries to play one, she looks like she's floating in formaldehyde.
|
| 20 |
Chicago Reader
A major washout.
|
| 20 |
Dallas Observer
An utter drag, a tepid and sterilized telling of Susann's life.
|
| 10 |
Time
One of the worst messes in years.
|
| 0 |
Entertainment Weekly
As bumbling and mindless, as naively misconceived, as that clapping-through-tears moniker.
|
| 0 |
Washington Post
If it were the last videotape available in the only video store in the remotest corner of Alaska, I'd take one last slug of Jack Daniels and start walking directly into the howling snows.
|
| 0 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Has to be among the worst movies ever made.
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