The First Time 2012

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times: No gratuitous raunchiness here and only a few tired caricatures in a genre usually jammed with them. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: The highest praise that I can give to this movie is that in the first fifteen minutes, I was rolling my eyes at these kids, and by the end, I was eager to re-watch that opening scene, to get to know them all over again. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: The First Time feels slight and pretty ordinary by the end, with no edge or compelling insights. Read more

Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times: There is much to like here, a sense of nuance and nonjudgmental emotional openness, yet Kasdan's teenage miniaturism never quite blooms. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's a hard movie to dislike. But try. Read more

Sara Stewart, New York Post: [An] inoffensive but bland ode to the talky high school movies of John Hughes and Cameron Crowe. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Writer-director Jonathan Kasdan can't even bother to satisfy the buildup with a real moment of consummation (welcome to the fade to black) or believable postcoital complications. Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: This teen romance proves perilously short on substance, insight and novelty, unless you count its characters being afflicted with a case of Juno mouth. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Something of a wonder, a palm-size ball of banter and irony and earnestness that never stops rolling and almost never misses the sweet spots. Read more