My Blue Heaven

Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: August 17, 1990

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

35	METASCORE Generally unfavorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Ernest Tucker

My Blue Heaven: a funny, sometimes insightful look at what life might be like when a hardened criminal is plunked down in middle-class suburbia. [20 Aug 1990, p.23]

Owen Gleiberman

The movie itself, with the exception of a few scenes, doesn't really have the wit it's aiming for, and among Steve Martin vehicles it's middle-drawer, at best. Yet that mood of silly exuberance reigns through most of the picture. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Script and direction are both fairly slapdash, but the actors and the overall sweetness keep this chugging along on some level . Read full review

Caryn James

It is apparent that through most of My Blue Heaven, Steve Martin's talent is tossed away on this sketchy outline of a howlingly funny idea. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Steve Martin is amusing as a gangster transplanted to the suburbs, but the movie is a mess, and too jammed with ethnic stereotypes for "just kidding" to be an excuse. [5 Oct 1990, p.12]

EmpirePhilip Thomas

It's plus points are few and far between - fantastic music, well worth buying the soundtrack for, and the occasional Moranis and Martin magic we would expect throughout - but such rare glimpses merely underline the sheer sogginess of the rest of the movie. Read full review

Matthew Gilbert

My Blue Heaven is weightless and unwieldy. It's a confused carnival of silly subplots and characters who never manage to form an ensemble. [17 Aug 1990, p.37]

Rick Groen

What My Blue Heaven has going for it: one funny premise and two earthly delights, in the comic persons of Steve Martin and Rick Moranis. What My Blue Heaven does not have going for it: anything remotely resembling a cohesive script. [22 Aug 1990, p.C4]

Susan Wloszczyna

Although about as authentic as Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Martin at least gets to dress funny. Joan Cusack's D.A. looks dowdy and is misused. Carol Kane's grocery-store siren looks slutty and is underused. And as a cop, Melanie Mayron should slap cuffs on her hairdresser. [20 Aug 1990, p.4D]

Rita Kempley

My Blue Heaven puts you in a stupor comparable to the one that comes on after Thanksgiving turkey. Written by Nora Ephron, it makes you long for the awful "Heartburn." Read full review

Johanna Steinmetz

Someone should have told Steve Martin that, prodigiously talented though he is, his over-the-top caricature of a displaced mobster could not sustain an entire movie, particularly one as scattershot as My Blue Heaven. [20 Aug 1990, p.2]

Sheila Benson

When director Herbert Ross is away from his dance numbers, he lets the pace sag frightfully. A lot of good talent on both sides of the camera goes down with this PG-13-rated ship. [20 Aug 1990, p.6]

Julie Salamon

My Blue Heaven is interesting as an example of how talented or at least experienced people can spend a great deal of time, money and effort on a movie that fails consistently, in almost every single scene. [30 Aug 1990]

Staff (Not Credited)

Talk about off-casting: brittle-romantic Nora Ephron writing a high-concept comedy about a Mafioso's troubles when the Federal Witness Security Program plunks him down in white-bread suburbia; humorless Herbert Ross directing it; Steve Martin playing the gangster. Talk about miscalculation. [3 Sept 1990, p.72]