When Brendan Met Trudy
Shooting Gallery | Release Date: March 9, 2001 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
12
Negative:
3

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
The movie luxuriates in cinema references while laughing at its own fetishes -- a neat talent. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJan Stuart
A plucky comic valentine for those who love the movies more than their own mothers. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
It's hard to stop quoting from a movie this good. Read full review
80
Washington PostStephen Hunter
An Irish lark that blows in, trailing daffodils and the sniff of spring, from that adventurous releasing company Shooting Gallery Films. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
It's a winning little movie about two people who get together, though they have no business getting together. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
It has that unwound Roddy Doyle humor; the laughs don't hit you over the head, but tickle you behind the knee. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
A charmer. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
This is only a movie. But a good one. May Roddy Doyle give us many more. Read full review
70
The New York TimesStephen Holden
Far from the first movie in which a fearless woman coaxes the inner tiger crouched inside a mild-mannered milquetoast to spring into action, but it is one of the most charming. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
There's still enough of Doyle's hilariously foul dialogue and outrageous, culture-shocked Irish characters for the film to be a good bit of fun. Read full review
60
Film.comTom Keogh
About two lives in which transformation is a constant, destabilizing threat to freedom and sanity. That's a very provocative premise, though halfway through the movie Doyle and Walsh abandon its potential to go for easy laughs. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Its greatest asset...Flora Montgomery, a flash of blond, Irish fire who makes Trudy well worth Brendan's trouble. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
McDonald and Montgomery are fun to watch in this mildly amusing Irish romantic comedy. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
A too-cute-by-half Irish romantic comedy that's overloaded with movie references that begin with the title. Read full review
50
SalonCharles Taylor
It's a movie almost doomed to be called "refreshing," in the way that the word is used to excuse the game but amateurish presentation of a quirky premise. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderFred Camper
Director Kieron J. Walsh never quite figures out what to do with the numerous film references (he quotes dialogue, they reenact scenes), and the resulting uncertainty in tone, which sometimes treats the characters as parodistic products of mass culture, undercuts his later attempts to suggest that their love is authentic. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
If you're charmed from the outset, this is an enjoyable trifle; if you're not, it never gets any less mannered and convinced of its own wit. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Poses as the story of a wild, eccentric love match but is really about a match made in limbo. Read full review
42
Portland OregonianKim Morgan
Lacks the perfect timing, luster and true vitality of its predecessors. Read full review
40
Mr. ShowbizCody Clark
McDonald makes for an appealingly befuddled bloke, and the sprightly Montgomery would turn any blighter's head. In a better movie, we'd care about what happened to them. Read full review
40
L.A. WeeklyPaul Malcolm
Struggles to achieve a giddy eccentricity that never fully emerges. Read full review
40
VarietyEmanuel Levy
Intermittently funny movie. Almost every scene recreates or alludes to a Hollywood or foreign classic. Read full review
38
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Trudy is really the only character with the "Barrytown" zest, and Montgomery throws herself into the role with unselfconscious abandon. She makes the screen crackle with energy. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It's the type of film that begs to be called “charming” and by doing so instead ends up grating. Read full review
20
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Doyle loves bad jokes and his story has no rhyme or reason, dissolving in its last third into a bungled heist and jailhouse face-off. Read full review
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