... a very pretty movie that has no idea how silly it is.

| Feb 8, 2018

The script fails to establish the likability of any of the main characters, which dulls the sense of urgency during the dramatic moments.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 23, 2010

What ensues is a couple of days of confession and mild debauchery. It's all sketchy and banal.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 23, 2010

It's possible that Niederhoffer was too close to her novel to stand back from its excesses. She's made a seriously self-indulgent movie about self-indulgent people.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 13, 2010

[It] somehow skirts utter loathsomeness by dint of its elegant camerawork and a few finely tuned performances. I'm not suggesting you run out to the theater and see this, but if it comes on cable someday and you have a big pile of laundry to fold...

| Sep 10, 2010

Instead of Rachel Getting Married with an Oscar-nominated Anne Hathaway, we get Galt Niederhoffer's misbegotten, miscast snoozefest with Katie Holmes struggling to prove that there is life as an actress while still being Mrs. Tom Cruise.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 10, 2010

With its tart dialogue and its perfect ending, it is sensitive as well as sagacious. It's a rare combination.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2010

Niederhoffer wears her influences proudly on her sleeve, but crosses that line between homage and mimicry, making it difficult to hear her own voice as a filmmaker.

| Original Score: 3.9/10 | Sep 10, 2010

A middling little movie that tries to trespass on Bergman-Renoir territory and simply isn't adroit enough to pull it off...

Full Review | Sep 10, 2010

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 10, 2010

A formulaic rom-com with an Ivy League pedigree and a higher-than-average SAT verbal score.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 10, 2010

Holmes is completely implausible as an insecure outsider, while Paquin isn't nearly threatening enough as her perfect rival.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 10, 2010

Proves unsatisfying not only because of its unlikable characters and often contrived conflicts but for the thoroughly implausible bride and groom at its core.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 9, 2010

The Romantics is a misnomer. "The Spoiled Melodramatics" would be more accurate. Or better yet, "The Pretentious Ones."

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 9, 2010

Clumsy camera work adds to the pre-wedding jitters in writer-director Galt Niederhoffer's pashmina-thin drama about attractive self-congratulatory Yale alumni gathering for the nuptials of two of their own.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 8, 2010

The Romantics is the kind of bland romantic melodrama that breeds resentment instead of sympathy for its young protagonists.

| Sep 8, 2010

The all-night orgy of stupidity that ensues is so contrived that instead of examining friendships and love, it only made me wish they had all drowned, saving us from 95 minutes of wooden, boring and inconsequential embarrassment.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2010

The Romantics gets much of the female chitchat right, from catty asides to sisterly chase-fights in bare feet.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 8, 2010

[It plays] as an elementary game of who-gets-who musical chairs, involving nasty behavior among pretty and thoroughly unconvincing aesthetes.

| Sep 7, 2010

Katie Holmes's trademark smirk may make only one appearance in The Romantics, but this turgid faux indie compensates by eliciting plenty of sneers via its pretentious and phony romantic drama.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 6, 2010