| 80 |
Rolling Stone
This comedy is packed with p---- jokes, the cruder the better.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
A bawdy, brainy sex comedy geared toward smart people with a sophomoric streak.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
Phoebe Flowers
An unapologetically stupid and implausible movie, but in the best possible way -- it's so sure of itself, it wins you over.
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
The trouble is that the film forsakes one sort of energy for another, and the downshift is a drag.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Nothing more than a sort of dumb, sort of clever fish out of water comedy.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
It's still easily the funniest movie of the year.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
The film is almost as shaky as the science, but Nichols knows how to get the most out of what amounts to a one-joke comedy, and Bening works virtual miracles.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
Let your children have their childhood while you have a rare, grown-up experience at the multi-plex for a change.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Examiner
In another universe - though it is difficult to imagine which one - Garry Shandling might be sexy.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
The film's asset, in a walk, is Bening, whose comic timing puts Shandling to shame.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
Marc Caro
Shandling and Nichols strain to reach a mainstream audience and wind up sounding like they, too, have been trained to tell us what we want to hear. Sorry, guys, but you don't score.
|
| 60 |
Slate
Garry Shandling is poignant and hilarious as an alien stud.
|
| 60 |
TNT RoughCut
Graham Verdon
With Gary Shandling appearing in just about every scene, only fans of his trademark whiny, disinterested delivery and sexist un-political correctness have a hope of enjoying his new film.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Goodman's comic delivery gets maximum mileage from a few amusing situations, though.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Nichols usually can lure A-list casts to even C-grade projects, and this is no exception.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
It's good for a few guffaws and chuckles, but in between the screen has a tendency to stretch at the corners and go flat.
|
| 50 |
Variety
Good for a few lascivious titters but quite lacking in the sort of comic bite and social satire one hopes for in the work of Mike Nichols.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
There's a certain satisfaction in recognizing that Harold -- even when he inevitably starts to feel, just like a human -- remains something of an a--hole.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Unfortunately the whole thing is less than the sum of its parts, despite a frequently droll script and a great performance from Shandling.
|
| 48 |
Mr. Showbiz
Richard T. Jameson
This one somehow gets about 300 percent better in its last quarter-hour -- suddenly this is a movie worth watching -- and it's over.
|
| 40 |
Washington Post
Has its sinfully funny moments. Funny, that is, if you appreciate a certain cynical clamminess -- or Buck Henry seediness -- to your comedy.
|
| 40 |
Chicago Reader
The buildup to social criticism in what at first appears to be pointless and partly misogynist exploitation is subtly impressive.
|
| 30 |
Dallas Observer
Adequately breezy and sleazy -- a movie about the horniest man in the universe looking for a little one-night stand.
|
| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Falls disastrously flat.
|
| 25 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Here is the most uncomfortable movie of the new year, an exercise in feel-good smut.
|
| 20 |
Salon.com
Bening's prickliness is pure delight, but there's only so much she can do. It's a terrible fate for an actress to be upstaged by a humming p----.
|
| 20 |
Time
At once smug and lazy, qualities fatal to comedy.
|
| 20 |
LA Weekly
Shandling comes off as a sleazebag -- all that's missing are the gold chains, tufted chest hair and English Leather.
|
| 20 |
Los Angeles Times
Sporadically funny, often strange and almost never poignant.
|
| 20 |
Austin Chronicle
Quite possibly, this could have been a hit back in 1975 or so, and almost certainly for Blake Edwards, but here and now it's just a puzzling aberration.
|
| 10 |
Newsweek
The combination of Shandling's button-down TV sensibility and Nichols's good taste produces a film whose tone is out of sync with the simple, ribald conceit and is only mildly amusing at best.
|
| 10 |
The New York Times
Wants to be sweet and dark at the same time, but it is as distant as a planet's satellite.
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