Beautiful

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

In the end, dark comedy drives the film, but it's overwhelmed by a desire to be liked, really liked.

TNT RoughCut Andy Klein

Generally engaging.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

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."

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

Generally engaging.

Time Richard Schickel

You don't quite believe that a smart woman would spend so much time on such a dumb mission.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Unfortunately, whenever Beautiful threatens to work as parody, it veers uncomfortably into pop psychology.

TV Guide Steve Simels

Sally Field has actually made a likeable movie.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

This film's wise and compassionate view is that, for many young women of limited opportunities, winning a beauty contest represents their best hope.

Film.com Robert Horton

Beautiful is a mess, but not without interest.

San Francisco Examiner G. Allen Johnson

SORRY, SALLY. I didn't like it. I really didn't like it.

USA Today Mike Clark

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Rarely does a movie go so thoroughly wrong in so many ways.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The tame, confused script eventually sinks the film, although Field shows skill directing actors.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Not one female character escapes mockery or patronizing.

Chicago Reader Ted Shen

Sally Field's direction is pedestrian, though she does manage to get winning performances out of Driver and Eisenberg.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

(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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

Miami Herald Sara Wildberger

The trouble starts with the script, and it doesn't end there.

Chicago Tribune Marc Caro

Spends its first three-quarters confronting us with one of the most dislikable characters in recent memory.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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.

Mr. Showbiz Cody Clark

Beautiful it ain't, but it is kind of cute.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Made with the slick, shorthand complacency of a TV movie, Beautiful is so overstuffed with contrivance, you can hardly breathe.

Variety Emanuel Levy

There's no particular reason to see this disappointingly trivial picture on the bigscreen.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

A tone-deaf dramedy whose need to please is a pain in the neck.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Insufferably cloying experience.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

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.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It manages to find an almost pitch-perfect accumulation of ill-matched tones, sheer grotesquerie, near-heroic absurdity and self-canceling folly.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

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.