Diner: Critic Reviews

Movies like Diner -- fresh, well-acted and energetic American movies by new directors with the courage of their convictions -- are an endangered species.

Diner is often a very funny movie, although I laughed most freely not at the sexual pranks but at the movie's accurate ear, as it reproduced dialogue with great comic accuracy.

Thoroughly enjoyable nostalgia film about lost youth that's as refreshing as a cup of coffee from a Greek diner.

Made by an insider, Baltimore's son Barry Levinson, who gets the texture and characters right, Diner is one of the most perceptive youth tales about the gulf between the sexes before the subject became a debatable issue.

Not a lot to it, but the sense of period is acute, the script witty without falling into the crude pitfalls that beset other adolescent comedies, and the performances are spot-on.

Even with all its accolades, it's still an underappreciated gem

Diner features a group of twentysomething friends whose camaraderie, hijinks and troubles ought to resonate with many viewers.

A thoughtful, charming sleeper.

Diner is a naturalistically acted movie, but Rourke is so fluent with streetwise gesture and cool grace that he makes his costars look like the Three Stooges.

A clever, biting script buoys a cast of soon-to-be famous actors in this endearing male-bonding ritual writ large.

Barry Levinson's directorial debut from his own Oscar-nominated script remains his most perfectly realised and charming movie and is a fitting eulogy to his home town of Baltimore.

Diner is a sort of poor man's American Graffiti, covering the same dramatic turf but lacking the style, wit and strong narrative structure of its predecessor.

Witty and fun.