Flipped: Critic Reviews

That Flipped isn't insufferably cute is a measure of its integrity. But it still strains to view the world through the eyes of children without a filter of grown-up cynicism.

A pleasantly nostalgic and well-intentioned family movie featuring strong performances by its young actors.

A minor pleasure that will strike a lot of moviegoers -- those who think no one makes movies for them anymore -- as a major treat.

There's barely half a film here, stretched and pulled so thin you can nearly see through it.

I can't say anything nice about Flipped, a painfully clumsy adaptation of a tween novel by Wendelin Van Draanen.

Flipped is sweet and something like honest, heartfelt and phonily sincere, and it will be, at risk of coarse honesty, catnip for old people.

Maybe what makes Flipped such a warm entertainment is how it re-creates a life we wish we'd had when we were 14.

Reiner's picture lands somewhere between synthetic nostalgia and the texture of real life.

Based on a popular young-adult novel and brimming with all the angst and schmaltz you'd expect from such a source, this awkward coming-of-age drama does nothing to gild the legacy of middlebrow maestro Rob Reiner.

Reiner, who made the similarly themed The Sure Thing about opposites who repel and attract, is a most sympathetic director of actors.

A somewhat leaden piece of work, its considerable charms nearly smothered by strange pacing and awkward staging.

We have here a movie that's pitch-perfect one minute and awkwardly schmaltzy the next.

It's a bit too Wonder Years at times, but the odd two-narrators gimmick plays right into the film's "flip" in structure.

The whole thing would go down like a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, were it not for the lively lead presence of Madeline Carroll and Callan McAuliffe, two young talents who make the movie better than it deserves to be.

Flipped is Rob Reiner's best film in 18 years.

Reiner again demonstrates compassion and insight into young people's battles to acquire self-knowledge, but in his new film, too many clearly fictional characters and contrived situations bog down his story.

Flipped is the kind of small, special movie that wraps you up in so much warmth, humor and humanity that it will leave you wishing that stories like this weren't so rare.

The importance of understanding varying perspectives is always worth communicating, and Flipped, despite its cloying approach, manages to deliver this idea with a decent amount of sincerity intact.

If the feature doesn't latch on to the senses immediately with its sugared claws, it's a long, ugly 85 minutes of dreadful behavior to endure, waiting for an ending that never arrives.

...if you want a wholesome, ultimately feel-good film about young love, this might be it. Or not.

I suppose some people may respond to this nostalgic ode to innocence and chastity, but I found it insufferable.

Not perfect, but its aspirations are admirable, and its execution is surprisingly effective considering (or maybe because of) its unadulterated sentimentality.

The movie feels static, like a diorama of ?60s life rather than a living, breathing story.