Trust the Man

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

A smart, sharply observed, highly affable look at contemporary relationships that finally injects a little life in the stagnating genre.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

If a movie that uses the word "relationship" 7,000 times puts your teeth on edge, stay away.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The cast, however, is great -- Crudup and Duchovny in particular share a fun chemistry that's just toilet-obsessed enough to be absolutely believable.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The film makes coupling look less like bliss and more like an exhausting series of skirmishes that can send one party scurrying into infidelity or out the door in search of something better.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Its strength is its humor, which is half-"Seinfeld" and half-"Sex in the City." There's a reason why those shows ran for only 30 minutes each - it's difficult to sustain comedic momentum for longer, as becomes apparent here.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A better than adequate date movie.

Empire Liz Beardsworth

Freundlich's intelligent, very funny take on male-female relationships manages the not inconsiderable feat of being both jaded and appealingly fresh.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

A botched adult romantic comedy that strands its leading player, and its audience, in a wearying, sitcom-slight battle of the sexes.

Austin Chronicle Toddy Burton

A relationship dramedy wields little power without an emotional punch. And when the theatrical (literally) climax attempts bold emotionality, one can’t help but wince.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Superficially entertaining romantic romp.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Does the world really need another movie about a married guy wandering blindly into an affair, or the married gal who can't decide whether to remain faithful or fool around?

USA Today Claudia Puig

Trust-- and the genre itself -- needs to dump the stale formula and embrace reality and reinvention.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

The actors gamely keep up their spirits, but the male characters are too one-dimensional and the female characters too bizarrely divorced from reality to be at all engaging.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

It wasn't so bad, aside from the god-awful ending; at the very least Freundlich manages to come up with funnier jokes than the ossified one-liners decorating Allen's recent movies.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Offers a passably entertaining bridge between empty-headed summer fare and fall awards hunting.

Variety John Anderson

For those who appreciate the Woody Allen view of New York but would prefer fewer neurotics, Trust the Man provides a loving take on bourgeois Manhattan contentment that's usually only found in episodes of "Will & Grace."

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

Trust the Man could easily carry the following subtitle: "Men Who Behave Like Petulant, Spoiled Children and the Women Who Decide It's Easier to Love Them As-Is Than To Try to Turn Them Into Grownups."

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Trust the Man quickly begins to feel hopelessly derivative of other, better movies.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Trust The Man presents itself as a funny, insightful Manhattan relationship comedy in Woody Allen mode, but morphs into the phoniest of Hollywood rom-coms.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Can these banal relationships between undifferentiated lovelies be saved?

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It's possible that a smart, insightful, sharp-edged comedy could have been written around these characters, but Trust The Man isn't it.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Has some good laughs courtesy of its cast -- but they're basically papering over a script that's masquerading as urbane and trenchant, when it's really self-involved and didactic and more than a little foolish.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The cast tries hard and a sprinkling of laughs results, but the project is defeated by a concept that is not very novel, a script that is not especially witty, direction that is neither sharp nor insightful and one-note characters that are simply not very interesting.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

Does not bring a single fresh, inventive idea to the table.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Ms. Moore is nicely lighted, but she too is poorly served by Mr. Freundlich's unfunny, unfocused screenplay, which basically stitches together a series of short scenes of four people whining in various combinations.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Emerges a weakling comedy of manners.

Premiere Ethan Alter

Trust the Man mainly feels like the work of a New Yorker who hasn't left his trendy neighborhood in ten years.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

"Man" is like a sour, half-formed version of a TV sitcom full of dislikable, disconnected characters.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

This is a movie that's built around characters the audience is bound to find more insufferable than anyone does in the movie itself.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

Writer-director Bart Freundlich (Moore's husband) has nothing to say and nowhere to go with this material, except to the most contrived ending this side of a "Will & Grace" episode.