Playing by Heart

The sum of the parts is a cautiously optimistic view of love's power to re-shape lives, propounded with considerable appeal. Read full review

The movie smacks of old-fashioned Hollywood phoniness. [22 Jan 1999]

Robert Altman's tantalizing, multicharacter style is considerably dumbed down in Willard Carroll's imitative Playing by Heart. [22 Jan 1999, p.3]

The trouble is that all of these characters are more interesting when things are going badly for them than when the tide has turned, and Carroll's determination to make the final reel an extended bout of audience tummy tickling is disappointingly conventional. Read full review

Playing By Heart covers a broad, multi-generational spectrum of romantic and familial relationships, but Carroll can't resist tying everything together in a shiny red bow. The result is daytime television at its most ambitious, an entire season's worth of flavorless melodrama and placating warmth. Read full review

A stellar cast and articulate script notwithstanding, pic fails to connect emotionally with its audience, which perhaps says more about the difficulty of making empathetic attachments than writer-director Willard Carroll intended. Read full review

The situations Carroll devises are perfectly controlled but dramatically void. Read full review

There are certain lines in certain movies that could be used to warn a certain kind of viewer to stay away. Such as: "We like the same merlot." It tells you everything you need to know about Playing by Heart, an ensemble drama about upper-middle-class people whose characters are defined mostly by their fabulous homes and apartments. [22 Jan 1999, p.47]

Jaw-droppingly corny. [22 Jan 1999, p.03]

With relationship patter that sounds like acting-class exercises, almost none of these stories feel true. Read full review