40
The Love Punch makes a virtue of its leads’ considerable charm and gorgeous French locations but is tonally wonky, comedically creaky and confuses light-as-a-soufflé with just plain silly.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The Love Punch is too sunny and self-effacing to be truly toxic.
60
The by-the-numbers plotting is a little clunky but there's fun to be had in the cast's easy chemistry.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
Recognizable human behavior is not this film’s forte -- which wouldn’t be a problem if something else would take its place but Punch never finds the right tone for the heterogeneous material, with sweetly melodramatic scenes alternating with high drama, some light action and farce.
40
Time Out London by Cath Clarke
This Brit comedy has the watchability factor of a mediocre TV sitcom.
50
Thompson and Brosnan really are fine romantic foils. They deserve a better movie to trade barbs in. They deserve better barbs to trade.
40
Sometimes it works - Brosnan and Thompson are sedately charming, Spall and Imrie are naturally funny together - but there's only so much humour you can squeeze out of Pierce's dicky prostate.
60
The Love Punch gets by in no small part thanks to the individual charms and collective chemistry between leads Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson.
40
This cast of national institutions make fools of themselves with a lack of vanity that’s theoretically fun, but there’s playing to the gallery, and then there’s clambering up there to wiggle your bits at them.