The Romantics: Critic Reviews

Clumsy camera work adds to the pre-wedding jitters in writer-director Galt Niederhoffer's pashmina-thin drama about attractive self-congratulatory Yale alumni gathering for the nuptials of two of their own.

A formulaic rom-com with an Ivy League pedigree and a higher-than-average SAT verbal score.

The Romantics is a misnomer. "The Spoiled Melodramatics" would be more accurate. Or better yet, "The Pretentious Ones."

What ensues is a couple of days of confession and mild debauchery. It's all sketchy and banal.

[It plays] as an elementary game of who-gets-who musical chairs, involving nasty behavior among pretty and thoroughly unconvincing aesthetes.

Holmes is completely implausible as an insecure outsider, while Paquin isn't nearly threatening enough as her perfect rival.

The all-night orgy of stupidity that ensues is so contrived that instead of examining friendships and love, it only made me wish they had all drowned, saving us from 95 minutes of wooden, boring and inconsequential embarrassment.

With its tart dialogue and its perfect ending, it is sensitive as well as sagacious. It's a rare combination.

A middling little movie that tries to trespass on Bergman-Renoir territory and simply isn't adroit enough to pull it off...

[It] somehow skirts utter loathsomeness by dint of its elegant camerawork and a few finely tuned performances. I'm not suggesting you run out to the theater and see this, but if it comes on cable someday and you have a big pile of laundry to fold...

Instead of Rachel Getting Married with an Oscar-nominated Anne Hathaway, we get Galt Niederhoffer's misbegotten, miscast snoozefest with Katie Holmes struggling to prove that there is life as an actress while still being Mrs. Tom Cruise.

Proves unsatisfying not only because of its unlikable characters and often contrived conflicts but for the thoroughly implausible bride and groom at its core.

Poignant? Only because someone worked pretty hard on this.

... isn't so much a romantic comedy as a lightweight indie ensemble drama that never quite gels.

If only we had a better feel for these people, some reason to care as much as they clearly do, who's to say how satisfying 'The Romantics' might have been?

The script fails to establish the likability of any of the main characters, which dulls the sense of urgency during the dramatic moments.

As far as missing-bridegroom movies go, this is less inspiring than The Hangover.

Adapting her novel for the screen, Galt Niederhoffer has improved her own story, tightening the script as well as the cast of characters.

The questionable conclusion might not satisfy your need for a definitive finale, but the film doesn't give you much to be satisfied with in the first place.

It's possible that Niederhoffer was too close to her novel to stand back from its excesses. She's made a seriously self-indulgent movie about self-indulgent people.

Flimsy melodrama, filled with clumsy, hand-held camerawork and turgid, pretentious literary prattle, signifying very little.

Has its minor pleasures. But they are too few and far between to warrant sitting through the entire film.

Indie wedding drama is too mature for young teens.

Just in time for hurricane season, this perfect storm of pretentiousness blows into a theater near you.

Niederhoffer wears her influences proudly on her sleeve, but crosses that line between homage and mimicry, making it difficult to hear her own voice as a filmmaker.