One Day 2011

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: It's a frustrating film, never light enough on its feet to be cute, never heartfelt enough to achieve "You had me at 'Hello.'" Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Miscasting aside, there's simply very little excitement to the film since you can see where it's going -- chances are even just by reading this review -- right from the start. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Hathaway and Sturgess lack the chemistry to make us yearn to see them together. They're all wrong for each other physically, tonally, logically, which only makes "One Day" feel a whole lot longer. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A miscast, underwritten, drably directed adaptation of a very popular novel, it's the feel-bad film of the summer and an almost perfect example of how not to turn a book into a movie. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Scherfig demonstrated her ability to infuse a talky script with plenty of wordless mood in An Education. But in One Day, the words - many of them taken directly from the book - are never convincing. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: "One Day" turns an episodic story into an anthology of feelings and associations, many familiar, a few surprising, some embarrassing and one or two worth holding onto. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The movie's content and style generate all the synergy of fingernails and blackboard. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: For much of its running time it somehow fails to capture what makes the book work so well. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: The movie maintains a sour undercurrent of emotional imbalance, as Sturgess' neediness and hatefulness dominate the story, even as he remains the more dynamic and protean personality. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: We simply zoom in and zoom out of the characters' lives rather than develop any kind of emotional attachment to them. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Watchable but not very gripping. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: When a movie inflates the importance of a love story that is predominantly comic in tone, even with a fair share of grief and loss built into the plot, that love story takes on more than it can handle. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Director Lone Scherfig, working from Nicholls's screenplay, takes a big step back here from An Education, her last film Read more

Eric D. Snider, Film.com: It's what a Nicholas Sparks movie would be if it were aimed at grown women rather than teenage girls. Read more

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: An unusual but ultimately successful piecemeal approach to romantic drama that follows a couple on the same day for each of 20 years. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: As so often happens with love, what you hope for is not even close to what you get, and in this case we are left with a heartbreaking disappointment of a film. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: One Day turns out to be less about enjoying a traditional happy ending than an admonishment to stop wasting time, get on with the business of living and enjoy every single moment with the ones you love. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Few films "get" the strange, intertwining bonds of affection quite so effortlessly, although the episodic structure keeps the drama from flowing nicely. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: No popular storyteller ever went broke stoking the undying female fantasy that if a good woman puts her mind to it, a heel can always be brought to heel. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: As 1992 rolls around, a sense of dread sets in: Are they really going to do every single year? Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: There are no sparks whatsoever, and that's always a deal-breaker for me in romantic films. Read more

Una LaMarche, New York Observer: It's a sweet, harmless, meandering tale with an engaging gimmick, but a great love story -- or a great movie -- it's not. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: The performances are overeager. Particularly distracting is Hathaway's accent, which is less Yorkshire than New York. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: In a season of movies dumb and dumber, "One Day" has style, freshness, and witty bantering dialogue. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: This tear-jerking twaddle, adapted by David Nicholls from his 2009 bestseller, is nearly as bad as Anne Hathaway's British accent, which is heading for infamy. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: You could definitely call it awful, and I'm about to do so, repeatedly and effusively. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: "One Day" is a beautiful movie, but beautiful in a way that life often is, not movies. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "One Day" won't set the world on fire but it radiates pleasing warmth. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Perhaps one day, Hathaway and Sturgess will reunite in a more emotionally satisfying romance. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The result is a rom-com with ambition, keen to actually develop the characters and to mix a few tears with the laughs. Well, the effort is admirable, the movie not so much. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: The leads are so lightweight and barely-there that a stiff breeze in the projection booth could make them disappear entirely. Read more

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: The characters that Nicholls brought so cunningly to life in the book feel rushed through a timeline, tied to an agenda. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: The film might make the book look less astute and interesting than it is, but it still has an undeniable emotional wallop by its close. Read more

David Thomson, The New Republic: One Day is just a gimmicky "new" way of doing an old-fashioned love story. But we'll hear much more of Sturgess, Hathaway, and Lone Scherfig. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Long before the credits roll, you may find yourself wishing your life could flash before your eyes, to end the monotony of this relentless turning of calendar pages. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Amid sharp banter, the film poignantly captures how lives meander and take unexpected turns. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: On a moment-by-moment basis, Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess make this long-arc love story viable, sometimes even vital. But the structural conceit proves more reductive than expansive. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: "Sense of humor is overrated," Emma says at one point, and while she means it ironically, the true irony is that One Day's sense of humor is sorely lacking. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Nicholls has proven a faithful shepherd to his fictional creations, who banter and rant at each other with the practiced elan of the aging couple they're clearly meant to be. Read more