The Mysteries of Pittsburgh fails on its own terms - not just in comparison with its source material.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 8, 2018

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh would play as weak sauce in any context, but it's especially disappointing coming to theaters on the heels of the similarly themed but superiorly made Adventureland.

| Sep 18, 2017

boring and aimless

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Mar 2, 2011

A mess of a movie, looking to contort Chabon's novel into a darkly personal story of choice and desire. Instead the film sloppily lumbers around in search of a consistent dramatic path. It's handsome enough, just wildly misguided from frame one.

| Original Score: D+ | Aug 26, 2009

The fact is, some novels don't translate well to the screen.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Aug 11, 2009

Guts the book of complexity and ambiguity and reduces it to another trite coming-of-age story with a badly written voice-over narrative by a boring post-adolescent.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 23, 2009

Michael Barrett's cinematography gives the film and the city of Pittsburgh just enough of a picturesque dream-like quality that, like its protagonist, you'll remember.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 17, 2009

[Art] is as passive as Benjamin Button minus the freak-of-nature excuse.

Full Review | Apr 16, 2009

Shoddy and never credible, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is an ungainly coming-of-age drama based on a (hopefully much better) novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 16, 2009

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh seems to be missing an essential element of drama, of risk, underneath its glossy, golden sheen.

| Apr 16, 2009

Somehow, even as writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber slathers on the voiceover ooze or unwittingly evokes Sophie's Choice with his central romantic triangle, he still manages to astonish with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.

| Apr 15, 2009

The movie is all over the place and it loses its focus.

| Apr 13, 2009

I can't imagine the novel's characters were this flat, formulaic and puzzling in their behavior.

Full Review | Apr 13, 2009

Sarsgaard revels in a character who attracts all eyes and mouths, but the narration is too much of an explanatory crutch to parse the roundelay of identity exploration.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Apr 11, 2009

The real mystery about The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is how writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber could turn Michael Chabon's delightful debut novel into such a bore.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 10, 2009

Here's the big mystery of Pittsburgh: How did this movie manage to be so completely terrible?

| Original Score: 3/10 | Apr 10, 2009

When characters say things like "It's gonna be a great summer," or call someone "Old sport" and act oh-so-beautifully doomed, it's time to call the cliché police.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 10, 2009

A misguided head-spinner of conflicting tones, listless lead performances and dashed expectations.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 10, 2009

When a director has an overinflated conception of the adapted book, we stand a pretty good chance of being really underwhelmed by the completed movie.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 10, 2009

The charm and drily pointed cultural observations that made Chabon's 1988 debut so auspicious are largely missing in action throughout this earnest but unconvincing film.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 10, 2009