Playing By Heart 1998

Stephen Holden, New York Times: For all its artificiality, Playing by Heart percolates with an earnest charm. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: This charming romantic comedy with a Los Angeles setting cuts between seemingly unconnected miniplots the way some Robert Altman movies do. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: If Playing by Heart is the kind of film that used to be known as a "woman's picture," it certainly provides more emotional nourishment than most other mainstream movies generate these days. Read more

Paul Tatara, CNN.com: It's much more enjoyable than this sort of date-movie thing normally is, and that success can mostly be credited to the big names populating the film. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The movie is consistently well-acted and features a gallery of characters so affable that it's difficult to actively dislike any of them, or, for that matter, the film as a whole. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: [It's] n tune with the current trend toward movies that coddle the audience with reassuring sentiments. Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: As a young scenemaker who keeps landing in one bad relationship after another, Jolie doesn't exactly avoid the pitfalls of the material she's given. But her performance is flabbergasting. Read more

Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle: Mushy yet funny and intelligent, the beautifully executed new film Playing by Heart is an ideal romantic comedy-drama for a winter afternoon. Read more

Derek Adams, Time Out: All of these characters are more interesting when things are going badly for them than when the tide has turned, and Carroll's determination to make the final reel an extended bout of audience tummy tickling is disappointingly conventional. Read more

Lael Loewenstein, Variety: Carroll's characters spend so much time talking, albeit intelligently, that the connections they make seem peculiarly synthetic. Read more