The Triumph of Love
Paramount Classics | Release Date: April 17, 2002 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 28 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
14
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Supple, eloquent and enchanting. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A gorgeous, witty, seductive movie. Read full review
80
SlateDavid Edelstein
Sets you nearer than theater permits -- and further back than most movies dare. A magic vantage. Read full review
80
New Times (L.A.)Jean Oppenheimer
The film is worth seeing for Sorvino alone. The actress hasn't been this good since Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite," a role that couldn't be more dissimilar.
80
VarietyDavid Rooney
Light, thoroughly entertaining comedy; Read full review
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
This intelligent, breezy romantic comedy sings a love song to theater. Plus, there's a hunky lug and Mira Sorvino in drag. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
The always reliable Kingsley and Shaw are hilarious, and if the movie isn't quite a triumph, it's still far better than the junk food currently cluttering movie screens.
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The story, based on an 18th century French play by Pierre Marivaux, is the sort of thing that inspired operas and Shakespeare comedies: It's all premise, no plausibility, and so what? Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
The artifice may be ancient, but the thought and emotions -- and especially Sorvino -- are beautifully, refreshingly modern. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
A lovely confection. Read full review
60
Film ThreatMichael Dequina
Indeed, a triumph of love: love of performance, love of joy, and, above all else, love of love itself. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Playful as it is, Clare Peploe's adaptation of Pierre Marivaux's romantic comedy coughs and sputters on its own postmodern conceit. Read full review
60
Rolling StonePeter Travers
What we're watching, however charming, is a fancifully costumed theater piece that cuts off the oxygen needed to make a play breathe onscreen. Read full review
60
Village VoiceLeslie Camhi
It's a giddy farce worthy of Lucy and Ethel, and Peploe plays up the buffoonery. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
I was periodically put off by a certain self-conciousness in delivering this material. Read full review
60
L.A. WeeklyF. X. Feeney
What is surprising, and what one takes away most deeply and happily from Triumph of Love, is a refreshed admiration for Mira Sorvino.
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
It could have been something special, but two things drag it down to mediocrity -- director Clare Peploe's misunderstanding of Marivaux's rhythms, and Mira Sorvino's limitations as a classical actress. Read full review
50
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Triumph of Love, Marivaux's 270-year-old romantic comedy, is a beguiling trifle, a gauzy, teasing inquiry into the fungibility of emotions. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
However charming Kingsley and Shaw are as the lovestruck pawns and Sorvino as the advancing queen, the premise is less playful than played-out. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Shaw and Kingsley both create crisp, comic performances, but Sorvino remains a problem throughout. Her physical transformation falls short of the "Boys Don't Cry" standard, to put it mildly. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Farce is a genre best served with building momentum and crack timing. This lazily paced piece seems more concerned with winking at the audience and putting quotations around the performances than anything so crass as playing this farce for laughs. Read full review
42
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's a gorgeous picture and features three substantial performances, but the material is chatty, forced and excessively arch. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineStephen Miller
It's all surprisingly predictable. As for Sorvino, she can wear the clothes, but they don't necessarily make the man. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
The result is an exquisite yawn that provokes consideration of how accomplished Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw and Mira Sorvino and others are as actors -- but how in this instance the characters they play so intensely never come alive. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeBeth Pinsker
Sorvino can't pass for a man, but that's beyond the point in this rarefied situation. She's beautiful and she can usually act, but here the only convincing thing she projects is fatigue from running around the garden all day. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It's the kind of thing that Shakespeare might have written if he had undergone a frontal lobotomy. Read full review
25
New York PostLou Lumenick
A triumph of misguided moviemaking, starting with a grotesquely miscast Mira Sorvino, who arguably gives the worst performance ever by an Oscar winner. Read full review
20
Austin ChronicleSteve Davis
All icing, with a few crumbs devoted to the notion that it is futile to resist the heart's desires. Read full review
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