Jane Austen Book Club, The

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Chick Flick indeed! Guys, take your best buddy to see this movie. Tell him, "It's really cool, dude, even though there aren't any eviscerations."

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

An enjoyable if fairly predictable film.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Neither trite nor pandering, and that's what makes the film better than most of its peers.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

For a visual bonus, Hugh Dancy appears in bike shorts as the lone male Jane-ite.

Chicago Tribune Tasha Robinson

Overall, The Jane Austen Book Club is an admirable mix of heady and fluffy, the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy that needn’t make filmgoers ashamed of what they wished for.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The entire enterprise ultimately seems designed to turn Austen into a self-help guru.

USA Today Claudia Puig

This is Austen lite, but pleasantly so. You can hardly fault a movie that fashions itself around a consummate writer whose keen sense of humor and gift for fully realized characters have resulted in countless screen adaptations.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

The domestic and romantic turmoil all gets resolved a bit too neatly to seem realistic, but realism isn't the goal; this is comfort food, plain and simple, and achieves its modest goals in nearly effortless fashion.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Everyone is given their due and dignity in this funny, sexy, humanist film that, if it is a chick flick, gives the genre a good name.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Swicord has a playful sense of humor and a good ear for dialogue, and the movie pleasantly accomplishes what it set out to accomplish.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The film's characters are lively, the women all look terrific (the guys do too, for that matter), and its many romantic story threads weave into artfully told tales of love lost and found.

Variety Dennis Harvey

Cast is first-rate all around, unafraid to play up the annoying, insensitive or self-pitying aspects of their nonetheless likeable characters.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Such a well-acted, literate adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler’s 2004 best seller that your impulse is to forgive it for being the formulaic, feel-good chick flick that it is.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Swicord has enough savvy to conjure up a terrific cast that compensates for her rote direction.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Those who know Austen novels will recognize how much each character resembles a figure in one of them. Those who do not will enjoy the amusing types. Men, this means you.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

There are no surprises here, in other words, but there aren't supposed to be: This is a comfort film, the on-screen equivalent of mac and cheese - though with a splash of truffle oil to class things up.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Worth watching primarily for Blunt, the delicious scene-stealer from "The Devil Wears Prada."

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The novels remain a witty portrait of life; this flick is just a study in preciousness.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The film comes across like a soap opera and there are too many characters and storylines for any one of them to grab the heart and imagination. The film isn't painful but it is disappointing.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

Perfectly pleasant, perfectly undistinguished adaptation of a market-driven novel about six Sacramento lovelies trying to mend their stalled or broken lives while massaging each other's feet.

Empire Angie Errigo

Quite a nice little relationship comedy-drama, but essentially for an audience of what the French charmingly call ‘women of a certain age’. Totally not the Superbad set, then.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

First-time director Swicord brews an atmosphere of geniality and warmth and brings a modicum of momentum to a happily discursive book.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Though it’s as estrogenic as dong quai, this amiable adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler’s eponymous bestseller about six friends and their book club is thoughtfully rendered with a certain universality of spirit – in that sense not unlike the books of Jane Austen herself.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

There's no subtext to The Jane Austen Book Club, just a skim across the books' surface that winds up re-shelving a great author into the self-help section.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Being male, I can't relate to this at all; on the other hand, I don't need Midol either, but I'm glad it's on the market.

Premiere Ryan Stewart

Ultimately, The Jane Austen Book Club amounts to little more than a lukewarm collection of half-realized rom-com scenarios not fleshy enough to warrant their own movie.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

It's a lot like a pumpkin spice frappuccino with extra sugar and extra cream. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll leave with foam on your nose. So cute. As a friend said on the way out: At least no books were harmed in the making of this movie. And he's right. But that's only because no one really tried.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's almost impossible for a movie to go irrevocably wrong during the opening credits, but the ceaselessly irritating The Jane Austen Book Club does just that.