Adam: Critic Reviews

Adam is sweet, meticulous, and, at times, sort of clever, but it's also a not-quite-surprising-enough heartwarming trifle.

Hugh Dancy plays a Manhattan engineer who suffers from Asperger's syndrome in this charming romantic comedy.

Despite obvious good intentions, this feels dishonest, and I suspect not very true to life. Worst of all, it risks trivialising mental illness into lovable quirks.

Adam is a cut above most romances and boasts a intriguing conclusion. One comes away with a sense of hope, leavened by realism.

At its best, Adam makes the viewer understand the frustration of living in a world in which everyone is a stranger.

While it's probable that this movie will bring Asperger's to an audience that's never heard of or experienced it, it's also likely to bore them.

Other than Rose Byrne's on-screen radiance and a soothingly warm palette lit by cinematographer Seamus Tierney, there's not much to get passionate about in this amiable chamberpiece from theater director Max Mayer.

Adam succeeds at getting inside its hero's mind and, more impressively still, gives us entree to his singular soul.

Sure, it's complicated, but isn't that always true of romance? And doesn't it blow the hinges off the universe -- every single time?

The two of them look terrific together, too -- enough so that you wish someone would cast them together in a much better movie.

Adam wraps up the story in too tidy a package, insisting on finding the upbeat in the murky, and missing the chance to be more thoughtful about this challenging situation.

Written and directed by Max Mayer, this anodyne romantic comedy is as predictable as the alphabet but should hold particular appeal to women whose maternal impulses inflect their mating instincts.

To its credit, Adam doesn't go for the cheap, easy solution. In that way, the film shares something of the spirit (and realism?) of (500) Days of Summer: an acknowledgment that not every close encounter, no matter how meaningful, can last forever.

Adam is a minor, tolerably enjoyable romance that doesn't add up to anything much.

There's no getting around the character's plight as an eternal outsider or the natural sympathy it draws. But writer-director Mayer never loses control of this fact, offering a story that's both sweet and tart, unique and familiar.

A touching and engaging film about a likable and attractive young man who suffers from Asperger's syndrome.

Emotionally potent performances, gently offbeat humor and writer-helmer Max Mayer's assured touch guide this tender New York love story to a quietly hopeful conclusion.

The beautifully crafted Adam offers no pat or easy answers to wrenching questions.

Adam is As Good as It Gets with a dash of Rain Man, movie comfort food, but still charms us through the familiar rhythms of its story.

The film rides on Dancy's wonderfully authentic performance.

Were it not for the fine engaging performances of both Dancy and Byrne, Adam would be sickly sweet.

I'm sorry to report that beyond that educational element and the delicate performances of Dancy and Byrne, I found Adam dramatically limp, predictable and in a curious way even retrograde.

This is an affirmation that it's still possible to find smart movies about one of the most basic aspects of the human experience: falling in love.

A sensitive but not sentimental story about a romance involving a mentally challenged young man never makes a misstep.

Adam is a most welcome summer treat.