Never Again

Variety Joe Leydon

A hugely enjoyable romantic comedy that dares to suggest that love can bloom -- and, more important, hormones can rage -- after 50. Smart, sassy and slickly packaged.

Film Threat

By turns touching, raucously amusing, uncomfortable, and, yes, even sexy, Never Again is a welcome and heartwarming addition to the romantic comedy genre; a pleasant surprise of a film that delivers so much more than its description leads one to expect.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Here's a case of two actors who do everything humanly possible to create characters who are sweet and believable, and are defeated by a screenplay that forces them into bizarre, implausible behavior.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

However insulting the script is to the formidable talents of Clayburgh and Tambor, they turn in Shinola performances.

Village Voice Ben Kenigsberg

A comedic semi-rehash of "An Unmarried Woman" (1978) with older leads, Never Again sports a good-hearted story but doesn't know how to tell it.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The opening of writer-director Eric Schaeffer's sloppy, sporadically funny adult sex comedy Never Again shows how an undisciplined filmmaker can sabotage his best intentions.

Boston Globe Janice Page

There are moments, too, where the forced hipness falls aside and the two lead characters just plain relate, realistically and maturely, with a seasoned playfulness that is truly charming.

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

This is not exactly original, but Schaeffer and his cast manage to make it tolerable.

LA Weekly Dan Fienberg

Schaeffer fails to develop the relationship beyond clichéd signpost events.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

It's a pleasure to see Jill Clayburgh on the big screen in a story about middle-aged love and sexuality, but she can't rescue this alternately trite and implausible comedy.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Youthful audiences won't be attracted to a love story between two 54-year-olds in the first place, and mature audiences will be turned off by the language, not necessarily out of prudishness, but out of its sheer crassness.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

Kudos to writer-director Eric Schaeffer for doing a sexually graphic romantic comedy about fiftysomethings without being patronizing or cutesy. With both heart and guts, he honestly depicts how that moony-eyed, falling-in-love rush of endorphins is the same at 55 as it is at 15.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A good-natured but trivial Manhattan romantic comedy.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A wretched comedy about middle-aged romance.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Clayburgh is the most dignified thing about this dreadfully overwrought, often preposterous romantic comedy.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The germ of a better film lies in that joke, but Schaeffer doesn't quite dig it out. Instead, we get painfully unfunny scenes that make us think that when it comes to writing comedy, Schaeffer should stick to his own rule: never again.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Clayburgh and Tambor demonstrate genuine chemistry, but the film keeps diluting it with awful attempts at comedy and worse attempts at drama.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

The movie, like its lovers, is really two films smushed together in the faint hope that sheer incongruity can grind out laughter.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Full of the kind of obnoxious chitchat that only self-aware neurotics engage in. Christopher and Grace probably deserve each other, but that doesn't mean that any of us do.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Schaeffer's howler of a romantic comedy, which presents itself as a valentine to Clayburgh even as it keeps dreaming up fresh ways to humiliate her.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

A meet-cute whimsy set among divorced fifty-somethings in New York, it blunders on toward oblivion, excruciatingly unfunny and pitifully unromantic.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Ray Conlogue

Rarely does a film so graceless and devoid of merit as this one come along.