Perhaps I’m looking at it all wrong. Maybe it should only be viewed as a lightweight romantic date movie, but I’m not convinced it works through that lens either.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 25, 2022

Southside With You is the falling-in-love movie most films handle with a pop song and a montage, smart, touching, lovely.

| Nov 4, 2021

Watching these two classy and intelligent people, we wonder if someone will make a similar movie about Trump, showing him taking his first dates to wrestling matches instead of art galleries and ending the nights by grabbing 'em by the -- well, you know.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 3, 2021

A tribute to the performances is that we look at the characters as people and not caricatures of famous people.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2021

Southside With You is a beautifully shot, engaging, and warm tale of two young people on the cusp of, well, everything.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 27, 2020

It's the sort of happy ending that makes the story of their first steps towards each other all the more compelling to watch unfold.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 21, 2019

Enamors and enchants you often to forget that the two main characters are the future President and First Lady of the United States of America.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 21, 2019

Southside With You is a warm little film, a sweet parting gift to the President and his First Lady and to the country as his era comes to a close.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 1, 2019

If you are looking for a date movie this would be a good choice.

| Original Score: B | Apr 11, 2019

An engrossing walk-and-talk biodrama that tips its hat to Richard Linklater's BEFORE trilogy while also breathing humanity into two iconic figures.

| Original Score: B | Mar 30, 2019

A charming imagined dramatisation of how the Obamas became the Obamas is sweet, warm, clever and suffused in a golden glow.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 19, 2019

Much like the smooth-talking man who would become President, Southside makes balancing many expectations look easy. Topics such as race, class, and especially gender, are touched upon with amazing ease.

| Original Score: A+ | Feb 5, 2019

First there was the rom-com. Then the zom-rom-com. Now we have the world's first obam-rom-com.

| Original Score: B- | Nov 11, 2018

There's a pleasant texture to the visuals of Southside With You, a soft visual style that compliments the two stellar leads.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 1, 2018

Southside With You is a rare love story. One that doesn't put on rose tinted glasses and magic moments. Instead, the film focuses on real, obtainable love.

| Sep 5, 2018

It's sweet and honest in its simplicity, and despite an ultra-low budget that can barely mask that the events aren't actually taking place in the late 80s, Tanne still manages something softly entrancing.

| Aug 28, 2018

"Southside With You" is a sweet, romantic film, but one that is layered with intelligence, relationship, and character building. It's an engaging re-imagining of the Obamas' first date.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 22, 2018

Southside With You is a lovely notion, a celebratory biography, and a slightly presumptuous memorial all wrapped up in a dreamy romantic date movie.

| Oct 10, 2017

I feel bad for anyone who would avoid it on the basis of political considerations.

| Sep 22, 2017

Southside With You doesn't need to preach, shout or wave its racial bona fides like a battle-worn banner. Instead, it embraces us, conspiratorially acknowledging a shared understanding that change requires fighting for hope and love in every moment.

| Original Score: A- | Sep 12, 2017