The Guilt Trip
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: December 19, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
50
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
18
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Arizona RepublicRandy CordovaDec 19, 2012
The Guilt Trip surprises by avoiding the obvious. It zigs when you expect it to zag. It's perceptive and thoughtful as it swerves around potholes that easily could have broken an axle. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie OgleDec 19, 2012
The humor is mostly gentle in nature; The Guilt Trip is clearly targeted at older audiences less than receptive to the crude jokes that made Rogen famous in movies like "Knocked Up" and "Zack and Miri Make a Porno." Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 18, 2012
There are laughs throughout, but Guilt Trip isn't joke-happy. The humor is light and well observed, as when Mom keeps playing the audiobook of "Middlesex," and the son gets uncomfortable hearing about anything sexual in front of his mother. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 18, 2012
Well, it's a masterpiece compared with 'Little Fockers,' the last movie featuring Barbra Streisand. Read full review
70
Village VoiceChris PackhamDec 18, 2012
Pairing Rogen and Streisand turns out to be inspired. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinDec 19, 2012
Though intermittently bathed in a halo of golden light and desired by at least one handsome, distinguished older man with a thing for mature women with healthy appetites, Streisand in The Guilt Trip is largely devoid of her famous vanity and narcissism. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumDec 12, 2012
The Guilt Trip is not about Rogen, bubbeleh. Streisand is her own once-in-a-lifetime trip, looking gawjuss with that divine voice and those killer fingernails, and the sight of the lady scarfing down four pounds of beef at a Texas steak joint is one a Streisand lover can now cross off her bucket list. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 20, 2012
The movie's silly, predictable, and surprisingly sweet - the sort of thing you can and probably should take your mother to. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 19, 2012
Guilt Trip is cinematic comfort food for road trip fans who aren't given indigestion by Streisand. Read full review
60
MovielineInkoo KangDec 20, 2012
The film's feel-good message is undermined by its ultimate purpose: As a vindication of the rights of Jewish mothers to annoy their children as much as they please. Read full review
60
TimeMary PolsDec 18, 2012
The Guilt Trip works because we all know and like a Joyce Brewster (or dozens of them). Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)James AdamsDec 20, 2012
The premise (and the promise) here, of course, is that, as the miles pass, the two will be as chalk is to cheese, oil to vinegar, an apple to an orange. And indeed this is what happens. Unfortunately, it's about the only thing that happens. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleLouis BlackDec 19, 2012
Watching this movie is not a complete waste of time, but it is little more than a sitcom-lite diversion. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundDec 19, 2012
Mothers and sons deserve an amiable comedy they can share, but this one proves to be faulty long before the requisite freeway breakdown. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithDec 19, 2012
It's a one-joke movie, if "Jewish mothers are annoying" is a joke. But just as a film about boredom should not actually be boring, no movie should credibly simulate the experience of being stuck in a car with Barbra Streisand for eight days. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedDec 18, 2012
It is to her everlasting credit that a famously exasperating perfectionist like Barbra Streisand could survive a limp noodle like The Guilt Trip. Read full review
50
The New York TimesStephen HoldenDec 18, 2012
The chief pleasures of this mild-mannered dud lie in watching two resourceful comic actors go through their paces like the pros they are. Read full review
50
VarietyAndrew BarkerDec 18, 2012
A timid, modestly pleasant time-passer distinguished mostly by its unexplored potential. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 18, 2012
A creakily old-fashioned comedy that forgot to pack the laughs along with the nudging and kvetching. Read full review
42
The PlaylistDrew TaylorDec 23, 2012
Overall, there is a fundamental lack of excitement or energy; it's a 95-minute movie that feels twice as long as "The Hobbit." Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 21, 2012
The jokes mostly fall flat and the dramatic scenes fall even flatter. Read full review
40
EmpireSimon BraundMar 4, 2013
Crazy, Stupid, Love writer Dan Fogelman can't rebottle lightning with a humdrum comedy that doesn't play to its stars strengths. Read full review
40
Total FilmNeil SmithFeb 9, 2013
Bickering turns to bonding over the course of a predictable affair that only comes to life during a Texan steak-eating contest that has Babs ingest a mountain of meat. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 20, 2012
The pretext of the movie, which was directed in broadbrush-cartoon style by Anne Fletcher from a coarse-textured script by Dan Fogelman, is a road trip taken by mother, Joyce, and son, Andrew. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenDec 18, 2012
There is something promising about the match-up of an old-school show-biz kid like Streisand with the modern, anxiously self-aware Rogen, but what could have been the multigenerational Thunderdome of Jewish Humor instead turns out bloodlessly disappointing. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 18, 2012
While the actors are appealing, their weirdly co-dependent characters aren't. And they don't learn enough to balance out the bland, intermittently irritating nature of their adventures. Read full review
40
Time OutDavid FearDec 18, 2012
What's surprising is that Rogen and Streisand have a genuinely complementary chemistry, feeding off each other in a way that suggests that, given a halfway decent script, the two would make a better-than-decent screen duo. Read full review
38
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 20, 2012
Anne Fletcher's lifeless comedy about an overbearing mother and her exasperated adult son, has no flawlessly delivered punch lines. It doesn't even have a hangnail. Read full review
38
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 18, 2012
Audiences deserve a resounding "mea culpa" for the embarrassing dreck, masquerading as comedy, in The Guilt Trip. Read full review
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