San Francisco Examiner by G. Allen Johnson
A movie that has an odd plot, quirky characters and a real edge, but it's not in-your-face, a re-invention of a genre or a smirky independent. It's different because it's flat-out great.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United States · 1998
Rated R · 1h 45m
Director Don Roos
Starring Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Lyle Lovett
Genre Comedy, Drama
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16-year-old DeDee leaves her small Louisiana town for Indiana, where her older and rich gay half-brother Bill, lives. DeDee decides to seduce his boyfriend and run away with him and a large amount of money. With his school teacher reputation on the line, Bill goes after them.
San Francisco Examiner by G. Allen Johnson
A movie that has an odd plot, quirky characters and a real edge, but it's not in-your-face, a re-invention of a genre or a smirky independent. It's different because it's flat-out great.
For all the cynicism on the soundtrack and the occasional lapses in tone, this is a remarkably generous comedy.
Chicago Reader by Lisa Alspector
This 1998 movie is essentially a compilation of things-aren't-what-they-seem games played on the viewer; all its little tricks, including Ricci's snide and smart-alecky voice-overs about movie conventions, are really old--except one. But it's not worth the wait.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
The wonder of it all is how bitterly funny the complications are, especially as filtered through Dedee's monstrously self-centered voice-over.
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
Very much like sex. On second thought, make that bad sex. Actually, sexual assault is more like it. It will leave you feeling used, bruised, violated, mistrustful and unclean.
Consistently clever without ever being funny. The film is so in love with its own carefully calibrated outrageousness that it doesn't bother to give its characters any depth beyond sitcom-level stereotypes.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The De-Dee character subverts those expectations; she shoots the legs out from under the movie with perfectly timed zingers.
It's an excellent date film, but it won't change your life.
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
It's a terrific movie.
[Roos's] dialogue (including an on-and-off voiceover by Ricci's pregnant, runaway sociopath) has a ringing clarity, his satire is low-key but quite real, and his actors mesh so perfectly you'd swear they rehearsed for months before shooting.
Ten seconds: the pain begins. Fifteen seconds: you can't breathe. Twenty seconds: you explode.
Jack's an observer who knows that everything in life is a gamble and that gamblers are born to lose.
The Other Side of Reason. The Other Side of Fate. The Other Side of Truth.
An age of rampant lusts, abandon, runaway passions. An age brought bristling to life by two of the most exciting stars of our time!