Dying Young 1991

Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune: Where most contemporary directors would be looking for ways to demonstrate their superiority to the material -- dropping in campy asides or meaningless technical flourishes -- Schumacher is looking for ways to make it work. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Yes, it is good to see how much of a difference actors can make with flimsy material, but wouldn't it be nice if they had something with more than the emotional weight of a Twinkie to work on? Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: These people are like an adolescent's idea of adulthood. They're junior high schoolers without zits, emotionally arrested and unaware of it. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Will someone please, please, write a part for Julia Roberts and not be happy just to look at her? Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Worst of all, Dying Young is a love story about two people who don't seem to be in love with each other. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: A pretty, decorative movie about messy lives and a tale best appreciated by those willing to check their taste for realism at the door. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Dying Young isn't a shameless weeper, but that's not necessarily to its credit. In a genre like this, sometimes ''tasteful'' just means confused. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: A movie like this has only one not-so-noble reason to exist: to make us sob. And it just doesn't deliver the goods. Read more

Michael Sragow, New Yorker: The onslaught-of-illness stuff is rendered not with emotion but with makeup and lighting. The actors are reduced to models in a film that tries to sell compassion by the shot. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Dying Young is a long, slow slog of a movie, up to its knees in drippy self-pity as it marches wearily toward its inevitable ending. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Death gets the glamour treatment in this genderbending ripoff of Love Story. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: Hilary O'Neil is poor but healthy, uneducated but full of spunky common sense. Victor Geddes is rich but mortally ill, overeducated and understandably fearful and withdrawn. In other words, they are made for each other. Read more

Wally Hammond, Time Out: Shamateurishly directed, this Roberts vehicle traversing the cliched class-clash/love story territory of Pretty Woman is a dog. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: Julia's hot; Dying Young is lukewarm. Read more

Joe Brown, Washington Post: Scott has Given Up On Life. You can tell from his apartment, which is nearly devoid of pop-culture clutter and kept in sepulchral shade. Read more

Rita Kempley, Washington Post: The treatment is blase when it means to be reverential, standoffish when it ought to just go ahead and be sentimental. Read more