We are coddled with bittersweet cocoa, dazzled with movie-star melodramatics and then trotted off to warm beds with assurance that as hard as life may get, there will always be a movie to trivialize our pain.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 5, 2023

Premature death has long been a screenwriter's crutch, but it's rarely felt as annoying as it does here.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 5, 2023

The saddest thing about Stepmom is that so many good actors are laid waste to this sappy and unrelenting melodrama. A waste of talent of this magnitude is really something to cry about.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 4, 2023

It earns its tears with great performances and good writing

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jan 22, 2021

If you're going to make children say such terrible things, you should at least back it up with a movie about divorce and death that is sincere and penetrating. In other words, the type of film that Chris Columbus wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 8, 2019

It's a lovely daydream, made lovelier by the fiercely maternal performance of Sarandon as a lioness protecting her cubs, and Julia Roberts as a mass of insecurity trying to measure up to impossible standards.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 2, 2019

Stepmom is a piece of formulaic Hollywood product that's barely redeemed by its three fine leads and top notch production values. It suffers in comparison to the similar, but far better, One True Thing.

| Original Score: C | Apr 2, 2019

Were it not for the stellar acting of Sarandon (the most infectious weeper this side of Brenda Blethyn) and Julia Roberts (irresistible as ever) the whole predictable enterprise would be too mawkish for words.

| Apr 1, 2019

Stepmom is highly effective filmmaking, eliciting its fair share of laughter and sobs, even though the least gullible moviegoers will be able to see all the melodramatic machinery cranking and groaning behind the curtains.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 1, 2019

Though Stepmom has its ups and downs, it shows Columbus as a director who has graduated to adulthood after his two Home Alone hits without losing sight of the struggles of children.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 1, 2019

The critic feels cheated, but all around him the audience is happily weeping.

| Apr 1, 2019

Well, if unearned pathos is your cup of tea, drink up.

| Apr 1, 2019

Under Chris Columbus' direction, they make a pretty but utterly misleading picture in which cheap sentiment is used to supply easy, false resolutions to agonizing issues.

| Apr 1, 2019

Roberts holds her own with a very attractive performance, admittedly given that hers is the character who is likeable, good-humoured and too good to be true.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2019

The result is a cartoonish two-hour-plus soap opera of little distinction, played by actors who deserve better and should have known better.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 1, 2019

A disjointed hybrid of domestic comedy and mortal illness that might have been written by a support group of lobotomy survivors.

| Apr 1, 2019

Despite its unappealing title, this is an incredibly touching and sophisticated film about life after divorce that examines the tricky issue of bringing a new partner into the family set-up.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2019

It is hard to credit that it took five credited writers to assemble this slender, contrived and heavily padded concoction, directed with unremitting blandness by Chris Columbus.

| Apr 1, 2019

Much of Stepmom's success is due to its three appealing lead players, all of whom lend class and intelligence to the enterprise.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 1, 2019

Chris Columbus directs as if he's handling a moral diagram: Stepmom is so full of understanding it made me want to throw up.

| Apr 1, 2019