Amati Girls, The

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Plays like a series of well-done but disconnected acting-class sketches, filled with a huge cast of first-rate actors whose careers have all gone into decline.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

The movie is as schmaltzy as I'd feared, and yet De Salvo does elicit some nice performances from her ensemble cast.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A soggy cannoli of a domestic dramedy.

Village Voice Nico Baumbach

An earnest ensemble weeper I'd at least feel comfortable seeing with my grandmother.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Although DeSalvo performs the miracle of making these characters seem like people we actually know, occasionally her delivery definitely makes us wish we didn't.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

Rather like listening to Vladimir Horowitz play "Chopsticks."

Miami Herald Curtis Morgan

Annie DeSalvo, a first-time director and screenwriter, can't escape the made-for-TV feel but does manage to give her cast, mostly once-big names fallen from grace and popularity, flashes of humanity between lessons about various saints and sermons disguised as dialogue.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Smacks of a certain kind of TV movie filled with pious uplift, even as it makes token concessions to contemporary lifestyles.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Only a memorably commanding Ruehl transcends the limitations of her two-dimensional character.

Chicago Tribune John Petrakis

All the obligatory plot elements are there. Love and loss, anger and forgiveness, illness and death. But they never flow together to make a coherent story. Instead, they just pop up whenever the script is in trouble. Which is all the time.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Has plenty of warmth, affection and conventional wisdom, but too much of the time it plays out in routine fashion with moments of contrivance.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

We all know how actors overact when they play Italians, and we all know how actors overact when they play brain-damaged characters, so just imagine Knight's performance as a brain-damaged Italian American.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie should be praying to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. Maybe he could perform a miracle and turn this into a cable offering, so no one has to buy a ticket to see it.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

The cast, which includes Cloris Leachman as the sisters' mother and Paul Sorvino, Jamey Sheridan and Mark Harmon as their various men, emote like pros, even as they deplete any audience goodwill left over from past triumphs.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

The characters seem both reduced and idealized, and the plot has turns a dispassionate dramatist would avoid.

Variety Robert Koehler

Most discomforting of all is the sight of world-class actors stuck in such threadbare material.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Although the concept seems promising enough, it is undone by disastrous casting decisions and an utter lack of ensemble unity.