Critic Reviews

Moves at a poky pace even by American indie standards. But it's worth checking out for the fine cast, which also includes Joanna Lumley as Rossellini's earthy pal, and scene-stealing Doreen Mantle as her tart-tongued but wise mother.

An entertaining diversion, mostly because Rossellini and Hurt are a pair of seasoned and graceful pros who know how to work every line and every gesture, and it's great to see them playing characters who are exactly their age.

As a portrait of aging, Late Bloomers is a little too easy, but its cast makes it worth a look, even so.

An uneven but touching comedy with a cheery score that sounds too much like whistling on the way past the graveyard.

She (Rossellini) is radiant in a profoundly ordinary and believable way, as always, and stirs up generational pathos all by herself.

The protagonists of Late Bloomers have a problem, but it's not that they're getting older. Their dilemma is that they're reacting so differently to aging.

As more characters, including the couple's three children - enter the picture, Late Bloomers loses its narrative thread and becomes so choppy that you have the sense that it was butchered during the editing process. What remains is the skeleton of a story that leads to an abrupt, icky-cute ending.

While the world could certainly use more films about characters entering their sunset years, a solution as toothless and saggy as Julie Gavras' Late Bloomers does little to help the cause.

Though Hurt and Rossellini make a warmly believable couple, they can't overcome the film's biggest drawback: Gavras' own awkward attitude toward aging.

Hurt tries on an English accent as if he were in the Walmart changing room and a splendid-in-theory supporting cast - Simon Callow, Joanna Lumley, Arta Dobroshi - either ham it up or make moony eyes. Extra discredit to the embarrassingly jaunty score by Sodi Marciszewer, which should be taken behind the recording studio and shot.