Steineded
How sad is this?
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
James
You might think that a movie with such a stellar cast would have some saving graces; but it doesn't. Bart Freundlich's effort dabbles in crudity that is just crude, comedy that is not funny and serious comment that cannot be taken seriously. it doesn't have enough of any of the above features, and really can't decide what message it's trying to convey. In a desparate last-moment effort to make things clear it kind of vomits out a syrupy ending that is embarrasing, implausible and absolutely out of synch with the rest of the film. A pity.
huggibear
It has the familiar happy ending, but I like that since I'm the kind of person who enjoys that kind of warmth of a happy ending, which is sometimes a bit overrated as well. Being bound by another via marriage is not happiness. Being bound by another via commitment to each other CAN be happiness. Can is obviously the operative word here. Like another reviewer commented, it is a shallow movie and lacks relationship depth, but then again, I'm the one to give all romantic movies a shot of at least one viewing. At best, 5 stars coming from me. I like that actresses and the actors. They've all had way better movies though.
Christopher Smith
With over 100 feature films released in year, it can be hard to keep track of all the titles worth tracking down and checking out. Last year I saw a preview for Trust the Man before Thank You For Smoking, but with the great number of other flicks coming out in wider release, I forgot about it until this weekend. After watching it, I wish I had forgotten about it completely for there is almost nothing redeeming about this cinematic catastrophe. The cast has no chemistry, the writing and directing is amateurish, and cinematography is murky.However, the picture's biggest fault is the tone. Trust the Man drifts uneasily from dirty sex comedy to tepid romance to boring drama from scene to scene, making for not only an extremely frustrating viewing experience, but an uncomfortable one as well. It's as writer/director Bart Freundlich didn't know what genre he wanted his movie to fall under during shooting, thinking that he would decide later in the editing room. Apparently that didn't work out either as it seems there are numerous scenes missing or incomplete. Other scenes go on far too long(the scenes with Billy Crudup in his car are perfect examples). There wasn't a single scene in Trust the Man I found effective, funny, or well done. The plot is a huge mess, gaping with holes. The only reason I give it a 1 as opposed to a zero is I reserve zeros for only those films that I find morally offensive/repugnant or without any artistic value whatsoever. 1/10
triple8
SPOILERS: What a cast this movie had! And the story sounded interesting too with a lot of potential. This is the kind of thing that I would normally like. But I really didn't care for the movie at all. I found it mostly average and was surprisingly disappointed.The performers were fine. Nobody really jumped out at me but nobody was awful either. But the movie itself just was not all that interesting. The characters were not all that compelling and the overall story didn't have a lot of oomph to it. With a cast like this I thought it would be a lot better then it wound up being.On paper this movie sounds great. It's got it all. A Great cast, a good story, it's got that New York flavor that I often love in movies. But somehow it didn't add up to as much as it should have. Not much of the movie was funny. In fact I am not sure I laughed more then once or twice. And the situations were very talky but a lot of them didn't go anywhere. I wasn't all that interested in any of the characters except Crudup's Toby and even then I wasn't hooked. It seems like something was missing overall. I think the humor could have been more biting and edgy. Some of it seemed very sitcomish and there was so much emphasis on and joking about sex. I could see this more as a television series then as a movie.It was also rather slow moving and at times just seemed to be drifting along. I did think the city feel to the film was one of the strong points. I would say this movie's around average. The ending was cute though. Very cutesy but surprisingly fun and a bit more creative then I would have expected. I think this movie had such a great cast and such a good storyline that more could have been done with it to give it more of an offbeat, fun feel. I'd also have liked to have the characters fleshed out a little bit more and seen more of an edge to the humor and more energy to the movie as a whole. I'd give this a 5.5 or so but wouldn't really say it's a must see.
