The film's not gonna be a critical hit. It's an extremely sentimental film, and most critics don't like sentiment. Don't expect big, critical kudos this time around (in fact, we may be less well-reviewed than we were on "Strike Back"). The NY Times is gonna shred the flick. LA Times too, I'll bet. EW probably ain't gonna be onboard.
Does the Times hate sentiment? Let's take a look:
50 First Dates: "[T]he unlikely sweetness of the story carries the day. What is most astonishing is the confidence with which the filmmakers push their premise to its logical conclusion, turning an ending that could have been either laughable or appalling into something so effortlessly heartfelt as to be nearly sublime."
Elf: "Elf' is a charming, silly family Christmas movie more likely to spread real joy than migraine, indigestion and sugar shock. The movie succeeds because it at once restrains its sticky, gooey good cheer and wildly overdoes it."
Monsieur Ibrahim: "This modest, sentimental film looks nostalgically back on Paris in the mid-1960's and casts a loving, oblique glance at the French movies of that era. . . . The two central performances help the lesson go down easily, and Mr. Duperyon's unassuming, slightly ragged realism gives the movie a sweet, lived-in charm."
The Cider House Rules: "The Cider House Rules is an unabashedly sentimental movie that wants to pluck our heart strings, and now and then its tone (and its quiet but incessant soundtrack by Rachel Portman) turns cloyingly sweet. But the performances have an understated gravity and the screenplay a thematic consistency that largely avoid tawdry manipulation."
About A Boy: "The Weitz brothers . . . handle the sentimentality of the story with a light, sweet touch. You succumb to the movie's warmth and bonhomie because the alternative is to remain in the isolating, self-protective cynicism from which Will has been lucky to escape."
Maybe, just maybe, Kevin, what the Times is really biased against is when you make a shitty movie.
(Then again, they've liked all five of his movies so far, even at his most self-indulgent. Go figure.)
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