…Michael Caine and Maggie Smith shine, but there’s an archness to Simon’s writing that makes California Suite hard to watch in 2024; there’s a vanilla feel to the characters that makes these movies very much of their time rather than for the ages….

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 19, 2024

California Suite gets stranded midway between hard social commentary and the aim to please those [Simon]'s criticizing.

| Aug 19, 2022

The supposedly humorous moments are disorganized, and the serious moments seem out of place.

| May 20, 2022

The first scene is perhaps the worst.

| May 27, 2020

Any movie which allows Jane Fonda and Maggie Smith to stalk through it like modern-day versions of Tallulah Bankhead and Gertrude Lawrence cannot be easily dismissed. They make California Suite seem like manna from heaven.

| Oct 30, 2019

California Suite is the third script by Neil Simon that Herbert Ross shoots, and it's also his worst. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 5, 2019

At its best, Simon's dialogue is both entertaining and illuminating and it's at its best in much of this film.

| Mar 9, 2019

The desperation of the director, Herbert Ross, is embarrassingly obvious in the Crazy Gang antics of this foursome.

| Sep 28, 2015

The West Coast version of Plaza Suite.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 4, 2009

Less than successful, veering from poignant emotionalism to broad slapstick in sudden shifts.

| Oct 3, 2007

An all-star bitch fest, slickly served.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 3, 2007

Means middle-class angst covered with a thin veneer of snappy one-liners and presented in the most anonymous directorial style imaginable.

| Oct 3, 2007

Quick and varied comedy, highly suited to Neil Simon's machine-gun gag-writing.

| Jun 24, 2006

For one of the acts in Neil Simon's stale anthology, Maggie Smith won a Supporting Oscar for playing a hard-drinking actress who complains to her bisexual husband (Michael Caine) that "Acting doesn't win Oscars. What I need is a dying father."

| Original Score: C- | Dec 24, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 21, 2005

Dire: good actors playing the worst versions of one-dimensional Neil Simon joke machines.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 16, 2005

sharp script and acting

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 26, 2005

Offensive, stupid, and embarrassing.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/5 | Jul 8, 2004

California Suite offers audiences a fine blend of laughter and variety which is the spice of good comic cinema.

| Jan 27, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2003