Beautiful

In the end, dark comedy drives the film, but it's overwhelmed by a desire to be liked, really liked.

You don't quite believe that a smart woman would spend so much time on such a dumb mission.

The tame, confused script eventually sinks the film, although Field shows skill directing actors.

Sally Field's direction is pedestrian, though she does manage to get winning performances out of Driver and Eisenberg.

It's a movie with so many inconsistencies, improbabilities, unanswered questions and unfinished characters that we have to suspend not only disbelief but also intelligence.

Made with the slick, shorthand complacency of a TV movie, Beautiful is so overstuffed with contrivance, you can hardly breathe.

Surpassing Dan Aykroyd's "Nothing but Trouble" as the most astoundingly atrocious walrus-flop of a directorial debut by a languishing actor ever contrived, Sally Field's Beautiful.