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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Kissing Jessica Stein
Fox Searchlight Pictures


8.1

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 17 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for sexual content and language

Starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Heather Juergensen, Scott Cohen, Jackie Hoffman, Tovah Feldshuh, David Aaron Baker, Ilana Levine, and JM J. Bullock

A modern romantic comedy that breaks all the rules -- it blurs the lines between friendship and romantic love, and finds the funny, surprising and ultimately poignant overlap between the two. (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Heather Juergensen Jennifer Westfeldt
DIRECTED BY:	Charles Herman-Wurmfeld
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 17, 2002 Video: September 17, 2002 Theatrical: March 13, 2001
RUNNING TIME:	94 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Audience Award for Best Film, Special Jury Prize for Best Writing and Acting, 2001 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival; FedEx Audience Award, Miami Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Delightfully unpredictable, hilarious comedy with wonderful performances that tug at your heart in ways that utterly transcend gender labels.

Time Richard Schickel

An edgy exploration of role playing and sexual choice in a climate where all options are acceptable.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

For an American film it is a groundbreaker in exploring the realm of sexual fluidity, and it does so with wit, wisdom and in a completely entertaining fashion.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's funny and human and really pretty damned wonderful, all at once.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

A pitch-perfect gem.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

This movie is about the survival of the open-minded. As far as current American independents go, it's the fastest and the funniest.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Delivers that rare combination of winning traits. It's a low-key comedy with a risque hook -- a seemingly straight woman dabbles in lesbianism -- yet it maintains an old-fashioned faith in literate dialogue, believable behavior and themes that reach beyond the plot points.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The screenplay is written with a thinking audience in mind, the dialogue sparkles, the characters leap off the screen in full three-dimensionality, and the cliches are kept to a bare minimum.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It's a charmer.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A small independent feature that's everything an independent feature -- small or big -- should be.

Variety Lael Loewenstein

Pure pleasure. A fresh take on sex and the single girl, this buoyant, well-crafted romantic comedy blends pitch-perfect performances with deliciously smart writing.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Westfeldt and Juergensen keep Kissing Jessica Stein bright and funny and loose.

Village Voice Leslie Camhi

Pays off in laugh-out-loud lines, adorably ditsy but heartfelt performances, and sparkling, bittersweet dialogue that cuts to the chase of the modern girl's dilemma.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

These women are smart, funny and wonderfully real, traits that one might safely attribute to Westfeldt and Juergensen, who also wrote the screenplay.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The performers bring freshness to what could have been cliched roles.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Westfeldt and Juergensen are smart, sexy knockouts, finding just the right mix of fun and tenderness in their writing and performances.

Newsweek David Ansen

The comedy gets better, and more unpredictable, as it goes, and so do the performances.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Right now, she's like the grade-school girl at the spin-the-bottle party who changes the rules when the bottle points at her.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Charming and witty, it's also somewhat clumsy.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Not about sex; it's about leaps of faith, at work, in love, in life.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

While this slightly edgy comedy has moments of offbeat charm, it would carry more conviction if the acting were richer and the characters focused on more sophisticated attitudes and ambitions.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Men may be gay by nature, but women are lesbians by choice -- for them, it's a simple matter of trading up. Such is the implied message of Kissing Jessica Stein.

Boston Globe Loren King

Small, sharply written, incisive comedy examines, with smarts and style and sexiness, the very nature of modern romance - gay, straight, and in between.

Film Threat Alex Nohe

While the film missteps in a few small places, it's charm, wit, and heart make Kissing Jessica Stein one of the few "must see" films of the year; quite an accomplishment for novice filmmakers.

Slate Stephen Metcalf

Smoothly narrated and is packed with some wonderful quirks. Nonetheless, it could have taken more to heart the lovely paradox it reserves for Jessica: that we most become ourselves in our capacity to surprise ourselves.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This is possibly the funniest lesbian romp since "Go Fish."

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

It all works on the level of a sprightly sitcom: lesbianism for the Lucy-and-Ethel crowd.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

All too content to be a comedy of surfaces and stereotypes. And because, for all the novelty of the bisexual romantic angle, there's something about Jessica, her New York-singleton ticks and her Jewish-family tocks, that feels...old.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Something doesn't quite gel in the end.

USA Today Claudia Puig

One of the film's strengths is that nobody -- male, female, gay, straight or Jewish mother -- is reduced to stereotype.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Eventually Stein's habit of dodging its own issues grows frustrating.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Westfeldt becomes irritating. That's one of the film's points, but it's made a little too well.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Amusing but extremely derivative.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The film is relentlessly peppy, often quite funny, sometimes a bit too convinced of its own adorableness and ultimately as smoothly reassuring as a TV sitcom.

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

The actual finale, which so betrays what's come before it that it leaves one walking out of the theater holding a grudge against what was.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Starts out as a lark, but veers into grittier, more emotionally complex territory -- just like a real relationship -- that the film doesn't have the chops to sustain.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it a9:
It's hard to think of a funnier moment in any film of recent vintage than the scene in which Jessica tells her pregnant co-worker about Helen. Conversely, "Kissing Jessica Stein" also has one of the best scenes that shows unconditional parental love for a child. The filmmaker doesn't make a running joke out of a mother's cluelessness. Even though the film undermines its wonderful mother-daughter front porch heart to heart in the final act, "Kissing Jessica Stein" has too many big laughs for this betrayal of premise to do any irreparable damage on our pleasure centers.

Nik K. gave it a 10:
I adored this movie! It is very well played and very well written and it captures an image of lesbianism more close to the truth than the other films I saw. Very funny and it leaves a bittersweet taste at the end.

Joel B. gave it a 10:
Kissing Jessica Stein is a virtually perfect movie. Any flaws it may have are miniscule compared to its many strenths. The script brings to life three-dimensional characters facing difficult dilemas in belieble ways. The dialogue is pitch perfect and often hilarious. The acting is strong. The pacing of the movie, helped by the editing, gives us a chance to relax after some tense scenes and leads us from offbeat humor back to drama. The finest compliment I can give is that the movie can be enjoyed over and over without blemishes being discovered after much viewing. There are no such blemishes. The DVD helped me to appreciate all that went into making this fine movie.

Bill W. gave it a 3:
Overacted, overwritten, and as a gay and lesbian film, it was done better in the 70's.

Jeff M. gave it an8:
Smart, if a little cutesy at times. It has that laid-back, soft around the edges feel of some of Rob Reiner's better films. Had they upped the ante by making it more intelligently raunchy (a la "Chasing Amy"), we could have a had classic here.

Jeremy S. gave it a 5:
The Somewhat Overbearing Mother. The Gay Best Friend (or in this case, Friends). The Montage of Unacceptable Dates. The Oblivious Side Characters. The Heroine Who Doesn't Know What She Wants In a Relationship. This movie has all these cliches and executes them in a perfectly average way.

Naomi R. gave it an 8:
The whole movie isn't going like you'd think it will go.. New players on the field, well done!!

Kissing Jessica Stein Fox Searchlight Pictures

Kissing Jessica Stein
Fox Searchlight Pictures