The Shape of Things
Focus Features | Release Date: May 9, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
13
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
LaBute is coming of age as an artist, and his future looks brighter than I ever would have suspected a year ago. Enfant terrible or not, he's starting to become a substantial figure in American film. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
Disarmingly funny new film with a doozy of a twist ending... may be his best, cruelest, most vital act of confrontation yet. Read full review
90
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Neil LaBute delivers his most interesting and powerful film to date, though it's also his most unpleasant and disturbing. Read full review
90
VarietyDennis Harvey
Very much in line with his maiden screen efforts "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors"...ends with a satisfying shudder of recognition at the extreme cruelty possible within human relationships, particularly those conceived by Neil LaBute. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
LaBute has that rarest of attributes, a distinctive voice. You know one of his scenes at once. His dialogue is the dialogue overheard in trendy mid-scale restaurants, with the words peeled back to suggest the venom beneath. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
His (LaBute) observation of human nature is keener than before, his dialogue more attuned to ambiguities. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The cast helps enliven what could otherwise come off as a treatise. All four actors played these roles during the play's off-Broadway run. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
What starts out as a talky, modern-day re-interpretation of "Pygmalion" (Henry Higgins is explicitly mentioned) turns into something heart-wrenchingly bleak. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMark Caro
LaBute never loses sight of what shape he wishes this crafty story to take. In the end, his aim is true. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The film is certainly clever enough to hold an audience's interest throughout, though in the end it's a victim of its own ambition. As a moral investigation, it's shallow and ultimately ludicrous. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The actors nail the comic sting in every line, punctuated by eleven prime Elvis Costello songs. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Intended as food for thought, but all we really get is a light snack -- the kind that's heavier in presentation than in substance. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
In The Shape of Things, love doesn't just hurt: It bites, and bites deep. Read full review
70
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Packing a dizzying array of motives and tensions into his careful, densely layered round robin, LaBute orchestrates The Shape of Things like a suspense thriller, full of hidden agendas and emotional switchbacks. Read full review
70
Dallas ObserverLuke Y. Thompson
Neil LaBute is back to his old self, and the cinematic world is a better place for it. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The movie isn't uniformly taut, but it's funny, acid and clever, the work of a fine craftsman working in a comfortable metier. Read full review
63
PremiereGlenn Kenny
Strikes me as more of a thesis piece than anything LaBute has put his name to thus far. Its characters don't seem to be people as much as they are stand-ins for ideas. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Though the writing is often sharp, one is reminded repeatedly by the actors' theatrical delivery of some lines and by the confined settings that the movie's origins were on stage. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Combined with the Mamet-lite dialogue, a medley of all-too-deliberate pauses, smug literary allusions and calculatedly careless repetitions of the word "thingie" that obscure the meaning hidden in supposedly meaningless prattle, the result is a chic, vitriolic polemic that's as irritating as it means to be provocative. Read full review
60
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Carries a potent statement about the superficialities of appearance, and how they're more meaningful to people than anyone likes to acknowledge. But when the players themselves are conceived this superficially, LaBute winds up invalidating his own point. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
LaBute is attacking our society’s obsession with the surface of things, whether it be a painter’s canvas or a human one, but his drama is, in itself, relentlessly superficial. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
Unfortunately, this film is not as convincing as LaBute's first feature ("In the Company of Men"), for it betrays its origins in the theatricality of its dialogue, resulting in an aura of artificiality. Read full review
60
EmpireColin Kennedy
Ultimately make no more than a cosmetic effort to disguise its stage origins. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
What it isn't is a believable relationship. Yet that may scarcely matter to LaBute, a gifted and corrosive wordsmith who appears intent, by now, on shoving all romantic couplings into the meat grinder of his misanthropic design. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
Despite an empowered female protagonist, manages in its own way to be as misogynous as "In the Company of Men." Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid Denby
LaBute's didactic purpose kills any possibility of frivolous entertainment. [19 May 2003, p. 94]
50
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Unfortunately, these actors are subject to Mr. LaBute's usual dramatic method, which is to cobble together a preposterous moral outrage and then wave it in front of our faces, asking us to believe that it is a window, or even a mirror. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The script consists largely of goofy little scenes in which various groupings of the four characters banter in that nervous, Woody Allen-ish, never particularly funny or endearing or believable dialogue style of the '90s dating movie. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
In its costumes, line readings, and structure, the movie faithfully preserves the stage production -- a provocative, if meretricious, evening of theater that ends in a paroxysm of LaButality with a bear swipe to the spectator's head. It is, however, more difficult to rattle a movie audience -- at least with words -- and, despite its streamlined presentation, The Shape of Things is not nearly as effective on-screen. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Besides repeating his premise that only fools fall in love and deserve whatever circle of hell they enter for it, he seems to really believe that morality has no place in art. Certainly, he's keeping it out of his. Read full review
50
SlateDavid Edelstein
In LaBute's movies, people are either clueless dupes or psychotic manipulators, while art is meant to rub your face in unpleasant "truths." And I think he takes a little too much pleasure in that nose-rubbing. Read full review
30
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
This might be the edgiest film of the year -- if the year were 1982. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
At best, the movie is a problematic chamber piece; at worst, a misdirected, slightly misanthropic pretension. Read full review
30
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
His (LaBute's) work needs attention even at its nadir, which I hope this new film is. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
If LaBute wants to plumb the depths of human unkindness, have at it -– only dig deeper next time. Read full review
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