Duplicity: Critic Reviews

Do we even care about these characters enough to worry about their machinations?

Duplicity doesn't have depth -- but it does have Julia Roberts, in full Hollywood movie-star mode. And for filmgoers with scaled-back expectations, that news may be enough.

However you describe it, Duplicity is superior entertainment, the most elegantly pleasurable movie of its kind to come around in a very long time.

With its smart writing delivered by an in-synch quartet, savor Duplicity as the ideal spring gift.

A pleasant big-studio diversion, a screwball romance with beautiful movie stars set in gorgeous hotel rooms, deluxe office spaces and corporate jets. It's smart, it's for grown-ups and it lets Julia Roberts laugh, if just once.

This movie is a breeze compared to the lawyerly Sturm und Drang of Michael Clayton.

There's a lot of doubling going on in the smart, savvy Duplicity.

Duplicity is betrayed by a surfeit of intricacy. Its ironic complexities tease the brain without pleasing the heart.

A snazzy piece of work, tartly acted and cleverly made. Trust me.

At times, Gilroy's leaps verge on gimmick. But the shuffled deck of place and time is intrinsic to the three-card monte rhythms. He keeps us guessing, even as we know he's gaming us.

It's a passably amusing brainteaser.

Duplicity is an enormously enjoyable hybrid, a romantic comedy set at the center of a caper movie.

Duplicity is entertaining, but the complexities of its plot keep it from being really involving. The fun is in watching Roberts and Owen fencing with dialogue, keeping straight faces, trying to read each other's minds.

Duplicity is more lighthearted; it's the Pitt/Jolie smackdown Mr. & Mrs. Smith without all the gunplay.

Should settle on the video shelf between Intolerable Cruelty and Mr & Mrs. Smith.

Aiming for a romantic-caper vibe, Duplicity zips from one elaborate piece of hugger-mugger to the next. But at a certain point, boredom sets in.

Gilroy expertly keeps viewers guessing about who is gaming who.

Duplicity, like all con movies, relies on charm, and there's plenty to go around.

It eventually falls victim to one or two twists too many, needlessly complicating an already complex plot.

Mr. Gilroy has outsmarted himself by pulling too many switches in his narrative. He then fails to recover by coming up with a smash ending that pulls all the scattered pieces together.

Slick, super-contrived, pretty to look at and totally, completely preposterous.

Smart, droll and dazzling to look at and listen to, writer-director Tony Gilroy's effervescent, intricately plotted puzzler proves in every way superior to his 2007 success Michael Clayton.

This is a sharp-looking movie with a blue-chip cast.

Director Tony Gilroy deftly mixes comedy with suspense as we see the extreme measures corporations take to steal one another's secrets and protect their own from theft.

[Director Gilroy's] determined to put some smarts into the world of double crosses and double martinis, and bless him for that.