Stepmom

New Times (L.A.) Jean Oppenheimer

A genuinely affecting movie that approaches its adult themes with intelligence, maturity, and rare authenticity.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

If emotional catharsis is what you seek, Stepmom delivers the goods.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

A film that's sad and poignant but not without humorous moments.

San Francisco Examiner G. Allen Johnson

About as warm, pleasing and inviting as a film about divorce, infidelity and terminal cancer can be.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's not without moments of wit and powerful emotion, but somehow Stepmom never feels either real enough to move us deeply or bubbly enough to make us forget our woes.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It may be unfair to ask a film like this not to be shamelessly manipulative, but wouldn't it be nice if audiences could be trusted to feel things more or less on their own without layers of unnecessary hokum entering the picture?

Variety Todd McCarthy

Everything about the film suggests that its makers consider it a deep, emotionally probing drama, but it's merely a soap opera with elevated production values and a sterling cast.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

To its credit, the film doesn't sugarcoat its women too monstrously, and it lets real conflicts and opinions occasionally creep in.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Too loud, bright and shallow for its subject: a movie that pushes too many obvious buttons to build naturally to the big, heartbreaking climax it obviously wants.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Less a movie about stepfamilies than a PSA about how cancer makes everyone behave themselves at Christmas.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

In a lumbering way, this depressing feel-good drama about the impact of cancer on two children, their divorced parents, and the father's girlfriend offers some useful insights into how feelings of jealousy and betrayal can limit the potential of family relationships.

Empire Angie Errigo

That this is a patchwork quilt of a screenplay (written by five credited writers) is apparent in its use of little bits of this and little bits of that. Did none of them notice, looking at the big picture, that it's unbelievable?

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Now the mush has taken over, and Columbus has slowed his pace in nervous deference to the solemnity of his plot (not to mention the opulence of his characters' lives).

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The skill of the actors, who invest their characters with small touches of humanity, is useful in distracting us from the emotional manipulations, but it's like they're brightening separate rooms of a haunted house.

Austin Chronicle Hollis Chacona

These characters are too remote, too pretty, and too unrealistic to move us in any lasting way.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

Loathsome though Stepmom is, the eternally coltish Roberts is always a pleasure to watch and Sarandon's mordant wit occasionally comes to the fore.

Time Richard Schickel

A pretty but utterly misleading picture in which cheap sentiment is used to supply easy, false resolutions to agonizing issues.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The movie is reasonably smart and touching when it deals with the plight of a family on the rocks, but it pushes too many emotional buttons when the ex-wife is diagnosed with a fatal illness that proceeds to take over the story.

Entertainment Weekly Staff(not credited)

Older and younger movie star snipe and glare at each other with little subtlety, and little chemistry either. The two characters appear to be skirmishing only because they're supposed to by convention.

TV Guide Sandra Contreras

The most impressive thing about it is that the actors manage to sound so earnest while mouthing the most shameless cliches imaginable.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is the kind of tearjerker that will cause audience members to cry, but only because they paid hard-earned money to see it.