Stepmom: Critic Reviews

A lab-engineered weepie!

These two actresses are so galvanized and team up so well that the women's relationship soon upstages anything having to do with the man.

Who knew Sarandon's headlight eyes and Roberts' high-beam smile would complement one another so well?

Never feels either real enough to move us deeply or bubbly enough to make us forget our woes.

When Susan Sarandon wants you to cry, you cry. When Julia Roberts wants you to smile, you smile.

The acting is good, as is a fair portion of the dialogue and quite a number of individual scenes.

Too loud, bright and shallow for its subject!

Not since 1979's Kramer vs. Kramer has a mainstream movie more accurately, insightfully, humorously or tear-jerkingly dramatized family life in our time than Stepmom!

It's merely a soap opera with elevated production values and a sterling cast.

A very bland pudding!

The script is a mishmash of cliches, inferior melodrama, and howlingly embarrassing dialogue, and the director, Chris Columbus, shows no evidence that he understands the meaning of the term 'subtle'.

Contrived yet effective family weepie.

A sloppily scripted, formulaic tear-jerker about spoiled rich people who whine a lot. I defy you to feel anything for these characters other than the desire to slap them--even Sarandon's obligatorily terminally-ill Mom.

Conveys many of the difficulties inherent in the stepfamily arrangement and the insecurities we all tend to feel when we compare ourselves to others.

Cheap melodrama!

Cae en los tipicos cliches y esquemas manipuladores de tantas otras cintas

You won't be able to suspend your disbelief, but you will need extra tissues.

Through the performances and screenplay, we often do get some extremely well-written and intelligent scenes.