40
The film is plagued by Anselmo's inability to focus on the heart of his story.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
Stateside's real-life frame allows the complexities of mental illness and military service to lose dramatic tension, resulting in a desultory home stretch of group therapy, tears, and reconciliation.
50
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
The film's biggest problem is its psychologically false ending. Having created a complex relationship, Anselmo seems to throw up his hands at the end and admit he doesn't have a clue about how to resolve it.
50
If the contrast between Marine life and blue-blood luxury sometimes pulls the film in awkward directions, Anselmo's perceptive fondness for all his characters -- parents, children, grunts, even drill sergeants -- more than compensates.
30
A mess.
25
New York Post by Megan Lehmann
Anselmo handles sensitive issues not with kid gloves, but with a metaphorical baseball mitt, fumbling with tone and obviously laboring to force quirks upon characters and situations.
25
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
If you were looking for an actress to play a tempestuous, schizophrenic movie-slash-rock star, you might go for Courtney Love or Angelina Jolie, or maybe even Jennifer Connelly. But Rachael Leigh Cook?
30
Partially biographical story of a rich kid's unplanned encounter with the Marines and his even more random romance with a schizophrenic movie starlet is contrived and emotionally incomplete, and strained further by self-consciously cockeyed dialogue.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
The finely observed moments in Stateside accumulate little emotional power. The promise of something startling and compelling goes unfulfilled, and the arc of the central love story isn't interesting enough to sustain the drama.
20
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
An unsalvageable mess.