|
New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Never Again
USA Films
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for strong sexual content including graphic dialogue, and for language
Starring
Jeffrey Tambor,
Jill Clayburgh,
Bill Duke,
Caroline Aaron,
Eric Axen,
Michael McKean,
and
Sandy Duncan
This romantic comedy takes a ribald yet compassionate look at two lovelorn fifty-something New Yorkers. (USA Films)
| GENRE(S): |
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Eric Schaeffer
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Eric Schaeffer
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: January 28, 2003
Video: August 5, 2003
Theatrical: July 12, 2002
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
97 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
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...
80
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.
70
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.
50
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.
50
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
However insulting the script is to the formidable talents of Clayburgh and Tambor, they turn in Shinola performances.
50
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.
50
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.
50
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.
40
New Times (L.A.)
Andy Klein
This is not exactly original, but Schaeffer and his cast manage to make it tolerable.
40
LA Weekly
Dan Fienberg
Schaeffer fails to develop the relationship beyond clichéd signpost events.
40
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.
40
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.
40
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.
38
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A good-natured but trivial Manhattan romantic comedy.
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A wretched comedy about middle-aged romance.
25
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
Clayburgh is the most dignified thing about this dreadfully overwrought, often preposterous romantic comedy.
25
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.
20
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.
20
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.
20
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.
16
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.
10
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.
0
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Ray Conlogue
Rarely does a film so graceless and devoid of merit as this one come along.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.3 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|
