Evening: Critic Reviews

Proves that not every book deserves its own film.

An affected and overwrought adaptation of Susan Minot's novel about a dying woman's memories of a complicated romantic incident in her youth.

Evening is a terribly refined, painstakingly composed study in aristocratic angst that audiences will be hard-pressed to believe a word of.

Not even a firm approach can rescue Evening from the enveloping thematic finery. It's a hopelessly classy piece of china.

Things are happening too fast to be convincing, and the romance -- rather, the one-night stand -- between Ann and Harris hardly seems worth a lifetime of regret, or two hours of your time.

Everything about Evening seems engineered to liquefy moviegoers, specifically middle-age female moviegoers who miss their mothers. This would include me: I was a sloppy mess by the end.

It works on paper, but [author Susan] Minot, who shares credit for the adaptation with fellow novelist Michael Cunningham, doesn't understand that screenwriting is the art of taking away.

This is one of the rare movies that are too sensitive for their own good.

There are few things more depressing than a weeper that doesn't make you weep. Evening creeps through its dolorous paces as prudently as an undertaker.

If you've not read Susan Minot's 1998 bestseller Evening, you will be happily oblivious to the movie's glaring departures and free to settle into this languid, gorgeously shot film, which bears only a passing resemblance to the novel.

It took me a while to warm to these people and their self-consciously idyllic settings -- as well as to the slick direction of former cinematographer Lajos Koltai -- but I was eventually won over.

Evening might be the most shocking waste of natural resources since the despoiling of the Amazon rain forest.

Boasting an ensemble of Hollywood's best actresses, this drama is unabashedly sentimental but still effective.

It courts its audience with a warm story about lost loves and paths not chosen, and it boasts an array of strong performances from its top-notch ensemble.

A collection of Lifetime-channel cliches arranged with the metallic precision of a machine.

The novel is too dense, too multilayered, too overpopulated to make a satisfactory film that is also faithful to the book.

A woman's deathbed reveries provide a poignant but rather obvious counterpoint to her daughters' present-day emotional concerns in Evening.

This weeping ladydrama -- this cinematic doily, this chintz wing chair from a P-town antique boutique -- takes us to the oxymoronic world of WASP emotion.

Evening could've been something precious. But it never rises above standard-issue 'chick flick'.

Evening's visual period splendour, its vivid characterizations and their comfortably cliched relationships somehow draw us in and make us care.

Designers will drool, but the problem is that Evening should have more going for it than Architectural Digest allure.

In its pursuit of superior craftsmanship and high-minded lyricism, Evening constantly risks sliding down the slippery slope into inept sentimentality and self-caricature.

The strength of the screenplay and acting provide a satisfying, although not overwhelming, two hours of romance, drama, and tragedy.

In Evening, an all-star team of filmmakers takes on a minor-league story.