Gray Matters

The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck

While Kramer's well-conceived screenplay features much amusing dialogue, there's a forced quality to the proceedings that makes the comic premise seem more artificial than it needs to be.

Variety Ronnie Scheib

Scripter/helmer Sue Kramer's awkward freshman outing eventually coasts on the genuine charm of its leads. A strong vehicle for Heather Graham, who has never looked lovelier, "Gray" scores most convincingly in its reinvention of Carole Lombardian sexual screwiness as head-spinning gender confusion.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Compared to Gray Matters, even a Nora Ephron bonbon has the weight of urban neo-realism.

TV Guide Angel Cohn

The only bright spots are Cavanagh's easy charm about him and Cumming's performance as Grody -- he's much more believable as a straight man than Graham is as a gay woman.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

This exhausting romance feels more like a long-lost episode of "Three's Company" in which Jack Tripper decides he is actually gay.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Some of it works, most of it doesn't. But the real problem of the movie is that it's so utterly lacking in freshness and originality. This is exactly the kind of formulaic indie gay comedy that was so overdone in the '80s and '90s that it became a film festival cliché.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Mildly diverting but slight, the screwball comedy Gray Matters changes it up, more or less creating its own genre, the curveball farce.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Far from a watershed moment for lesbian coming-out films, Gray Matters has a queer sensibility that's several miles south of "Will & Grace."

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Graham makes the coming-out dithering bearable, but not before she has jumped through hoops of contrivance.

Los Angeles Times Sam Adams

Kramer shows zero feeling for the nuances of a midlife sexual awakening.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Unfortunately, the film, written and directed by Sue Kramer, starts with a distinctly uncomfortable moral baseline: How exactly is any audience supposed to identify with a character whose relationship with her brother borders on the incestuous?

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

For all of 10 minutes, Gray Matters looks like it might have accomplished the impossible: uncovering a romantic-comedy scenario audiences haven't seen a million times before.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Nothing shakes this pathetic attempt at humor from its self-satisfied torpor.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Watching Heather Graham, Tom Cavanagh and a stridently adorable Alan Cumming do their wide-eyed, moony thing in the romantic comedy Gray Matters raises the question: Is it possible for a filmgoer to be twinkled to death?

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Every once in a while you catch glimpses of originality and see what Gray Matters might have been if it hadn't gone soft and safe.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Graham was good in films such as "Boogie Nights" and "Bowfinger" where her apparent innocence was a smoke screen for her lustful connivance. To be effective in the movies, she needs something to counteract her wholesomeness.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The dearth of ideas is exemplified at the end by a Mary Tyler Moore freeze-frame of Graham leaping in the air.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

There isn't a remotely believable moment in the script here, and Kramer's leaden direction only helps strand a capable cast headed by Heather Graham in an hour and a half of virtual laugh-free tedium.

Village Voice Michelle Orange

Coming from the strangely vacuous Graham, in a Manhattan this preposterous, the staid social message is as ludicrous as its surroundings.