Uptown Girls: Critic Reviews

[An] ungainly Manhattan fairy tale.

[A] standard variation of the princess myth.

An embarrassingly silly exercise that mostly serves as a platform for Brittany Murphy to model a fab wardrobe and glam hairstyles.

There's nothing wrong with Uptown Girls that not seeing it won't fix.

It's all too, too cute and too, too forced for words.

Director Boaz Yakin ... keeps shying from the darker material like a studio-trained racehorse, heading for the safer turf of slapstick and schmaltz.

Locates Fanning's 'maturity' in a fear of germs that comes off as borderline psychotic, and Murphy's childlike free spirit in her apparent inability to avoid walking into walls.

Combine two mannered performances with a script intent on achieving maximum cuteness, and you've got one wince-inducing sugar rush.

Though Murphy is radiant, and her laughs are infectious, her free-spiritedness is thrust in our face like a pointy object in a 3-D movie.

It's possible that Uptown Girls will supplant Gigli as the summer's biggest joke.

Murphy's performance has a kind of ineffable mischievous innocence about it.

The screenplay is by the numbers.

When Uptown Girls is released on DVD, its commentary tracks should consist of a single looped phrase: 'We're truly sorry.'

[A] comedy with no laughs.

Though I found Mr. Yakin's direction unexpectedly imaginative, and the script often incongruously subtle, I couldn't get into the spirit of all the whimsy, the reason being the surprising lack of charm in the two leads.

A light, occasionally charming and reasonably well-crafted tale about a transforming female friendship.

A creepy, depressing and leering 'comedy' that's a virtual collection of 'What were they thinking?' moments.

Not an especially raucous comedy, but it is an unfunny, rhythmless one.

Can two over-pampered but fundamentally lonely persons of the blonde female persuasion bond meaningfully with each other while shopping?

When Uptown Girls isn't trying to play up its wacky high jinks ... it stoops to the kind of psychological character development films this shallow should really avoid like the plague.

A modern fairytale that loads up big-time on the girly trappings but doesn't give you much in the way of plot or characters or even plain old sense.

It may be junk food with high sugar levels, but the inspired teaming of rising young actress Brittany Murphy and precocious tot Dakota Fanning makes you forget those hazardous sweeteners.

A consistently strained effort.