Love and Other Catastrophes

It’s a wonderfully spritzy dialogue-driven work, full of oomph and chutzpah. Read full review

Boosted by a terrific ensemble of five engaging young thesps, pic is forthright, frank and freewheeling in its approach to sex, love and cinema. Read full review

Croghan accurately illustrates the frustrations of a charismatic bunch of characters who are frank, funny and full of life. Read full review

An exuberant and supremely unselfconscious first film about five Melbourne college students and the various crises that befall them during one momentous day. The movie is in the best sense of the word artless (there's not an hommage insight), and its occasional missteps -- like a ham-fisted parody of partisan film students -- do little to undermine its charms. Read full review

It looks like a low-budget film, but in this case that just adds to the charm. Croghan's only false move was to divide her film into segments, each one introduced by a quote from a famous writer. Read full review

Filled with fun, style, and ensemble give-and-take, the peppy Love and Other Catastrophes restores one's faith in sex, lies, and videotape. [11 Apr 1997, p.C7]

Like many graduate students, Love and Other Catastrophes is smart, droll and doesn't always know when to stop talking. [11 Apr 1997, p.03]

The format couldn't be slighter or more familiar, yet this Australian film-festival favorite is one of the freshest romantic comedies of the season. [11 Apr 1997, p.F5]

While the student travails explored here are time worn and insipid, Croghan looks at them from a fresh perspective and with humor. The combination makes this debut film more than just another been there, done that experience. [25 Apr 1997, p.03E]

Made on a shoestring by a bunch of film school graduates (director and co-writer Croghan was 23 at the time), this sweet, brisk campus comedy has a refreshingly current feel. For once, you believe the actors are the age they're playing. The romantic musical chairs are routine, but Croghan has a light touch, and a shrewd eye for the rules of attraction. It's too unassuming to be brattily obnoxious. Read full review

Love's real heartbeat is the sheer likability of its attractive young cast and the earnest naïveté with which they reach (through obsessive movie fandom, endless conversation, and polymorphic romantic pairings) for insights just beyond their grasp. Read full review

There's a lot of potential charm here, but the director, Emma-Kate Croghan, is so distracted by stylistic quirks that the characters are forever being upstaged by the shots they're in. Read full review

A slight romantic comedy about five winsome Australian university students who fret and joke about their romantic woes when not talking about movies and cinematic theories. Each has a charming quirk — one (Frances O’Connor) is a cute lesbian, another (Alice Garner) is writing a thesis on Doris Day — but none is deeper than a bag of Reese’s Pieces. Read full review

Throughout, Croghan knows where she wants to go, but has no fresh ideas for getting there. The characters are reasonably appealing, but the jokes are mostly weak. Read full review

At it’s core, it’s just another youth-culture flick about the search for love. It’s also a mediocre bid to join the shoestring pantheon of such filmic self-starters as Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have It) and Kevin Smith (Clerks). Read full review

At 79 minutes, Love and Other Catastrophes is more of a snack than a meal -- one that could use a little less sugar. Now that Croghan has figured out how to bring characters she likes to the screen, her next lesson is to learn how to flesh them out without resorting to emotional shorthand. Read full review

This is a movie that was made not because the director had anything to say, but because she wanted to get a movie made. Even at that, the script is slapdash. Only one character has any dimension (Frances O'Connor's Mia), the plotting is the usual sub-screwball comedy with obligatory pranks and misunderstandings, and the overall tone is bland, smug and connivingly cute. [11 Apr 1997, p.C6]