Win Win is a comedy-drama that is warm-hearted and compassionate and enjoyable without, alas, being especially remarkable or original, which is a bit of a blow but I think you'll get over it.

| Aug 31, 2018

McCarthy understands the thrill of incontrovertible victory and our primal lust for it.

| Jun 20, 2013

Win Win isn't a morality play; it's just a really good story. But it does deal with an issue that couldn't be more relevant: Where do we draw the line when it comes to survival if it means clouding our sense of right and wrong?

Full Review | Sep 2, 2011

Beautifully observed, this serio-comic film is the stuff of life and, despite the plot contrivances, very engaging in its quiet way.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 17, 2011

The rare, humanist beauty of Win Win is that none of its characters is a caricature, none of its plot twists a blatant play for tears or laughs, none of its appeal based on some mythical lowest common denominator.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 28, 2011

A deft, warm, serious and often very funny film.

| May 23, 2011

Trying to please a crowd needn't be a shameful business. Tom McCarthy makes light comedies that notice the goodness and hospitality in unlikely people, yet stop short of sentimentalising them.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2011

Win Win is slighter, and sappier, than it might have been. Still and all, it's a joy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2011

For all its witty observations on the trials of modern manhood, it never strays out of its blinkered suburban comfort zone.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 19, 2011

Riffs engagingly on the quiet desperation of ordinary, decent folk who find themselves in a fix, who take the wrong road for the right reasons.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 19, 2011

Honest, insightful, warm and witty. A proper delight.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 19, 2011

Although there are times when Win Win feels a bit self-consciously whimsical, it rings much truer than most.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 18, 2011

What's just delightful about this wittily observed and touchingly truthful affair is the fact it offers consistently sherbety entertainment in the moment but ultimately holds to its purpose of saying something useful and genuine about real lives.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 18, 2011

Funny, agreeable and thoroughly enjoyable, if a little bit too neat and fortuitous in sorting out its entangled strands.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 16, 2011

Trundles along for the most part in sitcom fashion, even down to the plinky-plonky background music.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 14, 2011

McCarthy has established himself as a craftsman of conventionally quirky pictures that are entirely about ingratiating themselves with the audience. Within those limited parameters, Win Win works.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 8, 2011

Giamatti excels as the weak-kneed Mike, nicely working his gift for inner conflict and outer bumbling. As his wife, Amy Ryan is a ballast of unflinching moral certitude.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 7, 2011

[McCarthy's] writing reflects a wariness of human nature but he's not cynical; indeed, the story wraps up with a tenderness that feels true but completely without mush.

| Apr 4, 2011

Win Win is a winner all the way.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 1, 2011

Tom McCarthy's third feature proves something incontestable: The writer-director has a way with American characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 1, 2011