Town & Country

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Starts out as a somewhat weary farce of infidelity, but turns into something a lot more gratifying, namely a comedy of mercy.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

There is really nothing wrong with Peter Chelsom's Town & Country that younger stars would not have solved.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

There are several stretches when the movie is actually hilarious.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

What it does offer, however, are the pleasures of watching its seasoned stars expertly go through their familiar paces.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Where Town and Country gets really good and weird – and I do mean good – is only after about an hour into it in deepest, darkest Idaho.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

It may be a haphazard mess, but it's actually pretty funny.

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

Nowhere near as bad as distributor New Line seems to think.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Not unlike "Eyes Wide Shut," this is an eerily earnest contemplation of fidelity, and it's pitched as farce.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The humor here is overcooked to the point of limpness.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Has the air of a film and actor (Beatty)reaching clumsily for a golden past that's gone.

San Francisco Chronicle Wesley Morris

The movie's not bad enough to be world-ending, merely clumsy.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Sets up a cast -- and then proceeds to knock them down like ducks in a shooting gallery.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A lot of talent on both sides of the camera operating in low gear.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

This should have been Beatty's "Wonder Boys," but the filmmakers don't seem to realize they've sent their hero on a sexual adventure that neither his heart nor his dick needs to take.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

The film is clearly an unfinished work and one that feels like a ragged assemblage of parts from at least two entirely different movies all with the same cast.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The surprise behind Town and Country isn't that the director started filming without a finished script, but that he ever thought he had the start of one.

Film.com Robert Horton

Little entertainment value.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

So bewildering it's almost entertaining, this comedy of fiftysomethings and their extramarital affairs is one of those films you can actually see flailing for life.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Just coarse, clunky, jerry rigged, and -- worst of all -- not funny.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

What it doesn't have is a script that has anything original, cohesive, or, gasp -- funny -- to say.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The plot feels arbitrary and seems driven to invent new places for its protagonists to go, as if to justify a budget on which Woody Allen could have made six much better films.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

Limps into theaters at long last, practically begging, with every arthritic pratfall, to be put out of its misery.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

The script's tone veers chaotically -- and ambitiously -- at once aiming for a Noel Coward kind of elegant sparring, then for the lightly raunchy, rompy absurdism of "What's New, Pussycat?"

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Ragging on Town & Country is like shooting a school of fish that's already belly up in a fetid barrel, but the movie's ineptitude is almost incomparable.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Seems merely tired and stale, the opposite of fresh, marked by ideas for jokes rather than things that are actually funny. Then, without warning, it goes from inept to complete disaster, sinking from indifferent to fiasco in the blink of an eye.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

It's "Shampoo," 30 years after. What a surprise, then, that this effort ranks lower even than the Steve Martin remake of "The Out-of-Towners."