Love Me If You Dare
Paramount Classics | Release Date: May 21, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
16
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
If you like romantic movies but find Hollywood's increasingly sterile formulas to be a poisonous bore, Love Me if You Dare offers an antidote. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Much of the style strains too hard to be cute, but true romantics may shed copious tears of sympathy and empathy. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
There's something in the obsessiveness of these characters that pushes the film just beyond the level of believability, even for a romantic fable such as this. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneRobert K. Elder
It's a pitch-black, Grimm Brothers-style fable that enchants, frustrates and ultimately dares you to love it. Even if you don't, you'll be riveted. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
The rueful ghost of François Truffaut hovers over writer-director Yann Samuell's wonderfully capricious tale of Gallic lovers with no idea of when to say finis. Read full review
70
Film ThreatChristopher Zinsli
The script offers up some deviously clever twists and dark laughs reminiscent of the over-maligned French (coincidence?) Stewart spite-a-thon, “Love Stinks,” only with a jaunty European twist. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
A perversely dark romantic comedy shot and edited in the contemporary fairy-tale style of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amélie." But this one has a dagger for a heart. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
French films have long specialized in depicting the impassioned, go-for-broke infatuation known as l'amour fou. Yann Samuell's Love Me If You Dare may be the first to investigate l'amour annoying. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldMarta Barber
Unlike “Amélie,” Love Me If You Dare will not become a sleeper. But neither will it make you go to sleep. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterJudith Prescott
Despite the sterling performances by the two main actors, the movie tends to lose pace in the second half and needs more secondary characters. But for a first time in the director's chair, Samuell shows a deftness of touch that bodes well for the future. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerGianni Truzzi
Once we realize just how deeply hateful these two are, Samuell's free-spirited, romping visuals start to feel imposed on the film as a shameless "me too" ripoff of another, better movie. Read full review
50
New York PostJonathan Foreman
Slick but painfully precious, it strains to be darkly romantic but is bereft of genuine feeling. Read full review
50
The New York TimesStephen Holden
Whether you find its dual resolution hopelessly pretentious or profound depends on your tolerance for a certain strain of Gallic sentimentality that takes itself more seriously than it lets on. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Apparently, the idea of their passion is enough to save them from a life of boredom - if only it had the same happy effect on us. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Has to be one of the least charming French romances to find American distribution in recent years. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
It's a powerful psychological conceit, but Samuell subverts it at every turn with his carnivalesque style and canned Gallic wistfulness. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Perhaps because the film makes me feel so crawly, it is actually good. Yet still I cannot like it. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
Doesn't even play fairly by its own rules. What emerges isn't a romantic comedy at all, but rather--very much like "The War of the Roses" a few years back--a cleverly disguised monster movie. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The award for the most annoying character to appear in a movie so far this year turns out to be a tie: It goes to both of the oh-so-swankly tormented romantic mischief makers of Love Me if You Dare. Read full review
40
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
The film's attempts at meaning do it in. The longer it goes on and the darker it grows, the further it drifts from any kind of human experience, outside of its protagonists' particular flavor of madness. Read full review
40
VarietyLisa Nesselson
Valiant attempt to create a modern fairytale ends up being frustratingly creepy instead of haunting and memorable. Read full review
40
Village VoiceDavid Ng
The movie's hyperactivity eventually yields to such revelations as Life Isn't a Game and The Biggest Dare Is Love, but the ultimate measure of its conventionality is its soundtrack. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
The film is loaded with striking visuals, high energy and all-stops portrayals from its actors, but for all of Samuell's imaginative cinematic bravura, it is, finally, mainly exasperating. Phooey on Julien and Sophie's excruciating l'amour fou. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
It may be a simple matter of cultural dissonance, or maybe just a bad translation, but it's hard to see why this obnoxious romantic comedy about a lifetime-long relationship between two mischievous adults locked in an ongoing game of "Dares" was such a huge hit in its native France. Read full review
40
EmpireNick Dawson
An uncomfortable, if intriguing, mess. Read full review
38
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
Two of the most insistently unlikable movie creations to afflict audiences in some time, a pair of self-obsessed anti-romanticists who spend some two decades doing stupid things at each other's behest. They also whine a lot. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Mr. Samuell's stylistic revelries are meant as comments on the conventions and excesses of movie romance, but his approach is glib and self-congratulatory. No feelings dwell beneath the layers upon layers of faux-naïve artifice. I dare you to sit through this movie and not wish you were somewhere else.
30
Washington PostMark Jenkins
It's a nasty piece of work about two nasty pieces of work. Read full review
20
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
In this toxic tale of young psychopaths in love, the stylish, often stunning visuals are ultimately outmatched by the repellent protagonists at the story's center. Read full review
20
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
Irritating throughout, Love Me if You Dare turns positively appalling in its last half hour, with the inevitable final showdown producing an image that continues to curdle my stomach days later. Read full review
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