The Perfect Family: Critic Reviews

[Turner's] performance is the deepest and truest element in this shallow feel-good movie about the clash between gay rights and Catholic orthodoxy in a generic suburban town...

Renton's competing tones and intentions result in a film at odds with itself and its lead performance.

We need more of Turner onscreen, so I hesitate to criticize when she finally appears. But the truth is that she's sadly underutilized in Renton's debut.

Hardly perfect, but definitely trying to be good.

It would be ripe territory for self-reflection if this sloppy debut from filmmaker Anne Renton weren't plagued with as much self-doubt and uncertainty as its lead Catholic.

In the final scene I found myself laughing and crying at the same time.

A dynamite Kathleen Turner desperately strives to be named "Catholic Woman of the Year" in tyro helmer Anne Renton's feel-good religious laffer The Perfect Family.

"The Perfect Family'' is Kathleen Turner's show. And when a series of crises forces Eileen to re-examine her values and beliefs, Turner rises magnificently to the occasion.

It's hard not to wish that it had taken a few more chances and explored its certainly relevant themes a little more deeply.

The film's single saving grace is Turner, who channels that legendary Catholic guilt like there is no tomorrow.

This Kathleen Turner vehicle is a stiff, a picture with so little urgency that it drags on like a sermon without end, with all the flavor of a communion wafer.

Turner is terrific, but The Perfect Family doesn't know quite what to do with her energy, eventually taking on so much surplus woe, there's no chance for a clean exit.

A leaden, ham-fisted affair that was exactly the sort of pap John Waters was spoofing when he cast Turner as a serial-killing soccer mom.

At the most fundamental level, as a work of entertainment, it fails. Scenes meander pointlessly, beginning and ending without any change or story movement.

A moving story of a woman's attempt to keep pace in a world that's moving too quickly for her.

Hollywood generally avoids religion whenever possible. The Perfect Family, a sweet and touching indie comedy-drama, tackles the subject head-on without offending or alienating anyone.

A resolutely middle-of-the-road affair that never locates and communicates a very persuasive reason for its existence, or even a compelling dramatic throughline. A cinematic 'meh' if ever there were one.

In this dramedy, Kathleen Turner is sincerely sympathetic, as faith triumphs over religion.

Religion butts heads mercilessly with romance in this ironically titled dysfunctional family values dramedy. But the premeditated plot points are simply too blatantly stacked against traditional matrimonial tribes, in favor of idealized same sex unions.

The film's gentle, sentimental approach prevents it from ever really getting at the pain that's been swirling around this imperfect family for years.

This often amusing pro-gay comedy delivers a dysfunctional family and religious orthodoxy in extremis with a bright cast headed by a droll Kathleen Turner.

The trailers make it look like an irreverent, iconoclastic satire; in fact it's dramatic - when it isn't dull and obvious.

The movie teeters on the edge of caricature, but Kathleen Turner keeps it grounded and relatable.

An anodyne tale of family-centered acceptance that's neither comical when it wants to be nor touching when it strivers for pathos.