Isn't She Great: Critic Reviews

Isn't She Great is an oxymoron.

If you're looking for laughs, give Valley of the Dolls another read instead.

A wannabe satire shackled by misplaced reverence.

A surprisingly warm and engaging entertainment.

Only funny if you enjoy going out and paying for the kind of comedy writing you can stay at home and get free on sitcoms.

The script plays like a series of sketches, some too thin and some broadly overdone.

Here is a movie that needed great trash, great sex and great gossip, and at all the crucial moments Susann is talking to a tree.

The movie is a stinker, but it's not an enjoyable stinker.

A sluggish, joyless attempt at comedy.

The most notable aspect of this trashy (but unenjoyable) biopic of Jacquleine Susann, Valley of the Doll's best-selling author, is its running time (93 minutes); Bette Midler and Nathan Lane give two of their worst and broadest performances.

Amusing, light entertainment.

What's not there is the ability to stitch together the light tone of screwball comedy with the uncomfortable business of real biography.

Lane's sweetness, his naughty wiliness and his dapper charm all make his performance wonderful to watch.

Colorful and fun and has some good laughs.

Burt Bacharach is an inspired, period-perfect choice to compose the film's score, which deftly echoes the music, and in particular, the theme song of the Valley of the Dolls movie.

Midler's character is empty, boring, selfish.

Every joke and every scene collapses and blows away before it's finished.

gives its heroine all the rough edges of a throw pillow... Susann couldn't write sentiment convincingly and neither can Rudnick.

There are plenty of funny lines to keep the audience laughing ("I don't trust psychiatrists. They nap.") and lots of outrageous outfits for Midler to wear.

By the end, it's frustratingly clear that everyone involved wanted to avoid sending any audience member home feeling bad or thinking that Susann, or at least Midler, was anything but great.

A rather cartoonish biopic of struggling-actress-turned-trashy-writer Jacqueline Susann.

In an ideal world, Isn't She Great would have been a theater piece.

Bergman, whose comic timing can be brilliant, is way off his game this time.