|
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.
|
Where the Money Is
USA Films
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some sexual content
Starring
Paul Newman,
Linda Fiorentino,
and
Dermot Mulroney
A beautiful but bored small town nurse (Fiorentino) discovers one of her catatonic patients (Newman) was once a bank robber and has faked his paralysis to get out of prison. Together they pull a heist.
| GENRE(S): |
Crime
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
E. Max Frye (also story)
Topper Lilien
Carroll Cartwright
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Marek Kanievska
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: December 19, 2000
Video: December 19, 2000
Theatrical: April 14, 2000
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
88 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA / Germany |
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...
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
A preposterous plot, but it's not about a plot, it's about acting.
75
Baltimore Sun
Ann Hornaday
It's just another modest, unsurprising little heist flick. So why is it so much fun? Newman.
75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
A light, old-fashioned, likable film that capitalizes on the personae of its three key performers and a sort of playfulness.
75
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
The film never drags, but one of the enjoyable things about it is its way of taking its time letting us get to know and savor the characters.
75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
The Coen brothers might have done something inspired with this, but director Kanievska... turns out a more modestly entertaining little low-budget movie.
70
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Coasts to a smooth, frictionless stop, but its star doesn't; he works as if his career depended on this movie.
67
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Ultimately a fluffy bit of caper-noir, the success of Where the Money Is rests heavily with Old Blue Eyes.
67
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
I don't know that Where the Money Is would work at all were it not for what we, the audience, bring into the theater.
63
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
The film makers are so anxious to please their audience that they turn the last act into a preposterous cat-and-mouse game that nullifies the integrity of the story.
63
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Maybe this is a case of too many cooks spoiling a simple broth: The movie had four producers, five executive producers, three writers (credited ones, anyhow) and three editors.
63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A wildly improbable story that neither Newman nor co-stars Fiorentino and Mulroney, for all their panache and chemistry, can make much sense of it.
63
USA Today
Staff [Not Credited]
Easygoing and easy to take, the movie isn't much.
60
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
There's a caper and there are some laughs, but this isn't a larky caper flick; it's a pulpy little story that could at any minute go straight to hell.
60
LA Weekly
F. X. Feeney
The romance and sheer fun that Where the Money Is packs into its swift 89 minutes follow from the sweet surprise that neither is threatened by the other.
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
It's a lifeless little caper piece that never develops the magic and intellectual fascination it needs to bond with an audience.
52
Mr. Showbiz
Richard T. Jameson
Hazards nothing to speak of and asks chiefly to be congratulated for its modesty.
50
San Francisco Examiner
Craig Marine
If you haven't taken your mother to a movie in a while, this is the ticket, with its PG-13 rating, lack of violence and like that.
50
Film.com
John Hartl
Utterly lacks the spark that makes caper movies fun.
50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Newman's magnetic face isn't enough to raise this intermittently amusing thriller above the ordinary caper-comedy crowd.
50
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
With Newman, the movie emerges as a lively character piece with flashes of humor and grace.
50
Philadelphia Inquirer
Desmond Ryan
Leaves you in no doubt of where the talent is in what would otherwise be a throwaway picture.
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Stack
A forced, implausible flick that loses its energy as it tries to gain momentum.
50
Film.com
Robert Horton
There's very little here that rises above the level of a competent straight-to-video picture, except that whenever Paul Newman and Linda Fiorentino are onscreen together they create something special.
40
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
The only way the film could have had a prayer of working--and thereby tapping its stars' considerable strengths--is by taking a much harder edge and going for dark, even bleak humor.
40
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
The bad news? The story, which rumbles along like an unattended wheelchair on a gently sloping sidewalk.
40
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
Lacks any layers beyond its own amiable inconsequentiality. It needs the spark of the distinctively American slapstick craziness that has distinguished Frye's previous work.
38
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The unrelentingly dull Where the Money Is tests his (Newman's) legendary charisma in a way no actor could overcome.
30
Dallas Observer
Andy Klein
Slips by quickly enough, but it never engages our interest more than passingly.
30
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
This caper movie starts off as enjoyable guff before turning strictly formulaic and winding up as unenjoyable guff.
30
Village Voice
Amy Taubin
A caper film hardly worthy of his (Newman's) presence.
20
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Newman's charismatic, multishaded performance elevates the hodgepodge caper comedy a couple of notches above its preposterous plotting and self-consciously movieish texture.
 The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|
