Leatherheads Fumbles

Bland rom-com fails to rise above heap of clichés

(NEWSER) - Fish-out-of-water romantic comedy New In Town takes an old recipe and follows it to the letter, say critics. That's not a good thing. Renee Zellweger stars as a cynical Miami exec sent to cut jobs in an icy Minnesota hamlet full of warm-hearted folks, with results you can see coming "all the way from Duluth," John Anderson writes in Newsday. More»

Steve Carell, Julianne Moore star in winning romantic comedy

(NEWSER) - Critics largely enjoyed Crazy, Stupid, Love—and some have fallen head over heels for the romantic comedy with an all-star cast.

• In the Los Angeles Times , Betsy Sharkey gushes that the film “may well restore your faith in the very possibility of love, to say nothing of romantic comedies.” The “grand romantic gesture about grand romantic gestures conjures up the bittersweet magic of first loves, lasting loves, lost loves and all the loves in between.”
• "It’s the mild exception that makes, if not for a great movie, then at least for a pleasant surprise," writes Rick Groen in the Globe and Mail .

You know where it's going, but you probably don't care

(NEWSER) - Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis may not break any new ground in Friends With Benefits, but critics are largely giving the sex-filled rom-com the thumbs up:

• "The jokes don't all work and the topical references can be irritably hipper-than-thou," writes Andrea Gronvall of the Chicago Reader . "But at least director and cowriter Will Gluck (Easy A) aims high."

Sappy, predictable rom-com a guilty-pleasure only

(NEWSER) - Critics aren't exactly head-over-heels for Letters to Juliet, a predictable romantic comedy about a young woman helping an older one reconnect with a lost love, but it has its charms. Here's what they're saying:

• “Letters will hardly go down as the funniest or sharpest caper of the year,” writes Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon , but it's a “breathtakingly refreshing change” from the “flinty females and douche-bag dudes” that populate most recent rom-coms.

Critics prefer childbirth to Jennifer Lopez's latest rom-com

(NEWSER) - Jennifer Lopez stars as a perennially single woman who meets Mr Right just after her artificial insemination is a success in The Back-Up Plan, a romantic comedy that spawned more contempt than kudos among critics.

• Mary Pols at Time suffered through 41 weeks of pregnancy and 25 hours of labor, but that was a "walk in the park" compared to Back-Up Plan's "bland and offensive" 100 minutes, she writes.