Herbert Ross Movies

In many ways better than the 1939 film, this beautifully made movie is hurt by being a musical with indifferent songs.

Sharp dialogue + Streisand & Siegel make this stage-based comedy worthwhile.

The problem is that everyone in the movie acts so stupidly. Real people of average intelligence would have cut through this plot in about three minutes, and the movie would have been over.

Maybe the movie has too much coherence, and the plot is too predictable; that's a weakness of films based on well-made Broadway plays. Still, that's hardly a serious complaint about something as funny as Play It Again, Sam."

It’s the kind of movie that wraps you up in itself, and absorbs you at the very time you’re being impressed by its cleverness.

Funny Lady is a big, messy flop of a movie that's almost cruel in the way it invites our memories of Funny Girl and doesn't match them.

Thanks to the sparkling chemistry between its stars and Herbert Ross' gentle direction, this sweetly ambling comedy ranks among Neil Simon's finest screen adaptations.

Recommended for all those who occasionally enjoy their movies with a little cerebral spice added

The Turning Point is a handsomely-made resuscitation of Old Hollywood melodramas with a compelling duo at its center, but the formulaic script keeps this story from realizing its symphonic potential.

It's strange: We leave the movie having enjoyed its conclusion so much that we almost forgot our earlier reservations. But they were there, and they were real.

Less than successful, veering from poignant emotionalism to broad slapstick in sudden shifts.

Unfortunately, the film's defects spoil a bravura performance by Alan Bates, perhaps the actor of the past decade.

A complicated little musical, Pennies from Heaven is a dazzling, tragic spectacle.

I Ought to Be in Pictures is a slender but endearing Neil Simon comedy-drama, reflecting the human side of the prolific writer.

Simon's gift is also is his downfall. He's so good at writing lightweight dialogue that it all begins to sound the same.

There's not much dancing, but what's there is great. The rest of the time, Footloose is a nice hunk of trashy teenage cheese.

You know a movie's in trouble when they stop dealing with the characters and start throwing things at the screen.

Does the movie really believe anyone is as stupid as these characters? Does it care?

It is one of the worst movies of the year.

Steel Magnolias has jokes and characters to spare, which makes it more dangerous (and effective) when it goes for the full melodrama by the end.

Savagely unfunny and unbelievably stupid.

Requires more than the willing suspension of disbelief; it demands a willful abandonment of incredulity.

The movie has enough style to make you overlook reason and the occasionally erratic continuity.

It's an original, and what it does best is show how strangers can become friends, and friends can become like family.