Critic consensus:An enjoyable farce that relocates Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning to '80s California, offering fine comedic performances from Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler.

Numbered reviews:1. Richard Dreyfuss in top form.
2. Paul Mazursky hasn't only remade Jean Renoir's sublime 1931 Boudu Saved From Drowning: he's yuppified it, inverting virtually every meaning until the film becomes a celebration of the crassest kind of materialism.
3. Let me just say that Down and Out in Beverly Hills made me laugh longer and louder than any film I've seen in a long time.
4. As a comedy of manners it has a dependably keen aim, with its most wicked barbs leavened by Mr. Mazursky's obvious fondness for his characters.
5. One of Mazursky's few completely successful films.
6. An uneven satire with some wit, but sometimes too strident.
7. A sparkling social commentary that doesn't skimp on the laughs.
8. Filled with hilarious incidents and clever one-liners.
9. Silly but fun, and a big box-office earner.
10. Although it is more of a comedy of manners than a well-developed story, there are enough yocks and bright moments to make it a thoroughly enjoyable outing.


Critic consensus:While not the classic its predecessor is, this update is well-acted and conjures a chilling resonance.

Numbered reviews:1. The remake shakes down as a conventionally plotted thriller. It's the performances that make it exceptional.
2. While Demme's Manchurian Candidate may be unnecessary, it's a worthy homage to the original; lacking the first film's spark but containing smarts of its own.
3. Demme's filmmaking has lost none of its jazz.
4. With an inchoate admonition implanted in its aggrieved, post-modern heart, Demme's Manchurian Candidate is blippy and fractured and smeared with color.
5. A case of smart and talented people trying to jam a Cold War square into a Gulf War circle.
6. It shunts through the material, doing some interesting synthesizing, some genetic recombining, but it all adds up to something less powerful and interesting than the original.
7. This one plays more like a contemporary techno-thriller with ultra-clammy '70s conspiracy thriller overtones, and Demme milks the atmosphere of pervasive, sleep-deprived dread beautifully.
8. A fine and thought-provoking film in its own right.
9. This humorless and nonsensical update of The Manchurian Candidate - a total misread of Frankenheimer's classic original - never quite engages, devolving the original's camp and satire into self-serious melodrama.
10. A rather decent imitation in the end with political subtext and very good performances.


Critic consensus:Graced with effective performances, Take My Eyes compellingly explores the subject of domestic abuse while avoiding simplistic characterizations.

Numbered reviews:
1. These kinds of films are hard to keep out of your mind.
2. The film won a sack of Goya Awards in 2004.
3. Handles the subject of domestic violence with intelligence and compassion.
4. The performers are luminous.
5. This small, somber drama says things to battered women they probably already know. What it says to their abusers -- of any country or culture -- they can't afford to ignore.
6. We emerge worn but wiser, having stepped, if only momentarily, and secondarily, into the shoes of the brutalized.
7. Harrowing, psychologically astute drama about domestic abuse.
8. The story isn't exactly new, but Bollain, an actress in her own right, keeps Take My Eyes from sinking into clichés.
9. If Take My Eyes explored how a woman could still feel for a man who abused her, it might have gripped us with its difficult truths.
10. For once, it makes sense that the battered wife always returns to the abusive spouse, even if we don't believe his promises ('I've changed') any more than hers ('I'm never going back').