Critic Reviews
63
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
6(55%)
mixed
5(45%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 11 Critic Reviews
88
A lavish and sometimes lusty version of the French hit musical, minus the songs but with lots of Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. [17 Jan 2000, p.Q]
80
Mr. Lemmon is little short of brilliant — vigorous, incisive and deft.
75
On a scene-by-scene basis, this picture has so much to offer in terms of some fairly unhinged and wild work from a bunch of artists at the height of their powers.
75
A fairly ordinary (for Wilder) adaptation of a play with a great performance by Lemmon as a French cop who falls for hooker Shirley MacLaine. [18 Jul 2003, p.11E]
67
Far from the home-run laughs of “The Apartment” and “Some Like it Hot,” Irma La Douce is still a fun if G-rated tour of the seedy Parisian underbelly, but coming in overlong at close to 2 1/2 hours, would have benefited from some tighter editing.
63
If not exactly an endearing experience on the whole, Irma la Douce is a fine example of Billy Wilder’s mid-career eccentricity and cosmopolitan curiosity.
60
Lemmon and Maclaine fail to reproduce the chemistry from The Apartment but this slight film is not as ignorable as reputation suggests.
60
Wilder's soft-centred cynicism provides frequent enough laughs without too many longueurs.
60
Far too long for a lighthearted farce, with dull patches that outnumber the high spots, the film is really about Maclaine and Lemmon striving to rise above the fat Diamond-Wilder script and Wilder's lethargic direction.
50
Two hours and 23 minutes is an awfully long haul for a frivolous farce.
