As overcranked as it is – the film is directed as if it were an action drama, with two or three times more cuts than necessary – People L...
RogerEbert.com June 28, 2012 I like smart movies about smart people, and enjoy it when most of the facts are on the table and we can contemplate them together.
Genuine emotions barely win out over soapy complications in People Like Us.
The film does have its charms, but getting to them means seeing past a Buick-sized contrivance.
Globe and Mail June 29, 2012 People Like Us is that sort of on-the-nose drama, where every emotional reaction is telegraphed and delivered right on cue.
If not for the icky air of incest, Pine and Banks would make one fine-looking couple.
It’s hideously compelling, like being in the room when one woman asks a woman who isn’t pregnant when she’s due, except that...
A honorable misfire, with maybe one-quarter of the impulse engines spinning in the here and now.
Its hard sell wears you down and draws you in, even as you know you’re being manipulated.
Daily Telegraph November 8, 2012 Chris Pine’s alpha obnoxiousness, even when deliberate, goes a long way to render this prodigal-son drama unappetising.
ScreenCrush June 29, 2012 a perfectly acceptable 'Jerry Maguire'-lite for people who like to put their noses in other people’s problems.
It’s undeniably manipulative and sentimental but it’s also somewhat refreshing to see a drama that isn’t laced with irony, c...
Rolling Stone June 28, 2012 People Like us is saved from melodramatic quicksand by live-wire acting from a touchingly vulnerable Chris Pine and a heartbreakingly good Eli...
Guardian November 8, 2012 Nothing Like Us would have been more accurate.
People Like Us seems to have been devised for audiences who want to experience an entire year’s worth of soap opera complications in a s...
Chicago Reader June 27, 2012 The movie develops into a painful story of one generation inflicting its selfish compromises on the next.
A good payoff, but the middle drags.
What they’ve really done is stitch together a decade’s worth of Katherine Heigl/Jennifer Aniston/Kate Hudson romantic comedies, an...
People Like Us is informed by real feelings uncorked like a lost bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon hidden away in a dark corner of a private wine c...
Though it’s just a Christmas tree away from being a holiday special, the stellar cast wrings just enough genuine emotion out of a s...
This is a straightforward family comedy-drama, a movie made for adults, and one that actually gives its actors – among them Chris Pine, E...
A sensitive, decent, well-crafted little drama about frailty and forgiveness.
…a sentimental but strongly made standout in a summer otherwise full of superheroes and space aliens.
New York Post June 29, 2012 One of those "heartfelt" dramas that was obviously dreamed up to win awards but fell short and is instead being dumped before awards season.
Pine and Banks are just good enough to suggest that in an honest movie, they would have been even better.
Slant Magazine June 24, 2012 This dry-as-dust enterprise bogs down in an almost total lack of energy and imagination that no amount of faux earnestness can overcome.
