Love Ranch
E1 Entertainment | Release Date: June 30, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
37
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
11
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
63
New York PostLou Lumenick
Mirren maintains her class throughout Love Ranch. She may deserve another Oscar just for keeping a straight face while reciting a ridiculous speech about the Donner Pass tragedy on her way to a tryst with her character's lover. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter Travers
"GoodFellas" Oscar winner Pesci, who hasn't appeared onscreen in a major role since 1998's "Lethal Weapon 4," is a dynamo of conflicting emotions. And Mirren, bawdy in ways that erase all memory of her award-winning role as Elizabeth II in "The Queen," is magnificent. Read full review
60
MovielineMichelle Orange
Mirren tricked out in mid-70's pimp wear -- ahead of her time, she even brandishes a cane -- has a certain charm, but novelty alone can't keep Love Ranch's tiresome tropes and plodding storyline from dragging the film down through the Nevada dust. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
A marvelous thought, credited to Orson Welles: You can handle shit with velvet gloves, but the gloves only get shittier; the shit doesn't get glovier. As wondrous as the regal Helen Mirren can be, it's a sad day when her queenly demeanor gets dunked in doo-doo. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazinePete Hammond
Love Ranch proves to be a provocative, highly entertaining and surprisingly touching peek into a unique world movies don't often explore. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Though based in truth, Mark Jacobson's script is built on age-old clichés. And nobody knows how to end the film, so it just fizzles out. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicKerry Lengel
There's a great film hiding somewhere in the wreckage of "Love Ranch." Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Thanks to the great Helen Mirren as the wife and Spanish actor Sergio Peris-Mencheta as the boxer, the film does create a convincing portrait of a late-flourishing love that takes everyone by surprise. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter Debruge
A tawdry look at the early days of Nevada's legalized brothel business that plays more like Lifetime fodder than the Martin Scorsese pictures that serve as its model. Read full review
50
NPRScott Tobias
Mirren cuts the figure of a bodice-ripping paperback heroine, a withering desert flower who blooms in the arms of a swarthy prizefighter roughly half her age. Mirren embodies the fantasy beautifully -- but Hackford's feature-length valentine to her all but sabotages the rest of the movie. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The script fails to persuade me this story needed to be told. It should have been trashier or more operatic, maybe. I dunno. It exists in that middle space of films that accurately reflect that which has little need to be reflected. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Love Ranch bounces between tongue-in-cheek wackiness and soapy melodrama while rarely hitting a true note. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
So with two great, ideally cast actors and such potentially fascinating subject matter, why does Love Ranch feel like a clumsy TV movie? Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
What could have been a juicy, pulpy noir, based loosely on the real-life 1976 Mustang Ranch love triangle involving Joe and Sally Conforte and Sally's boxer paramour, instead has the dramatic consistency of rice milk. Read full review
33
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Maybe Hackford, and his screenwriter Mark Jacobson, were attempting to convey the dullness of vice. If so, they vastly overcorrected. But what about the dullness of the performances? Read full review
30
The New York TimesStephen Holden
In Ms. Mirren's first film to be directed by her husband, Taylor Hackford, since "White Nights" in 1985, her formidable dramatic resources can't camouflage flat writing that eventually veers into gloppy sentimentality. At times even Ms. Mirren, who adopts a regionless American accent, seems uncomfortable. Read full review
30
Village VoiceMelissa Anderson
Hackford's pacing throughout is continuously off, with scenes extending several beats too long, his two leads adrift and bored. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesGary Goldstein
The grand Mirren is, truth be told, miscast and Pesci is misdirected as Grace and Charlie Bontempo. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Director Taylor Hackford ("Ray") seems to be aiming for a big "Boogie Nights" social canvas, though the movie's risible prize-fight sequence is more reminiscent of the later "Rocky" sequels. Read full review
25
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Taylor Hackford, fails to squeeze the tiniest bit of juice, sexy or comic or otherwise, out of the chintzy-libertine locale. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Material this banal needs a madman of David Lynch proportions to incinerate it. Hackford leaves it intact, forcing us to regard a car he doesn't have the guts or skill to crash. Read full review
25
ObserverRex Reed
Even Helen Mirren on a bad day is better than nine out of ten American film queens polluting movie screens on any given Sunday, but really, this is one time she should have stayed in bed. Read full review
0
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
It is a colossal bomb, an epic miscalculation, an excuse for actor self-indulgence and for what sounds very much like bad improvisation. Read full review
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