Critic Reviews

• Mark Jenkins, NPR

  [Lau] successfully balances satire and sentimentality in the first half, but loses his bearings in the sappier second part.

• Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

  Whatever does work here - mainly a soulful performance by Liu Ye - ultimately gets lost in the excess.

• Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times

  The film strains credulity by pushing its characters wildly to and fro with a shamelessly sentimental screenplay.

• Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times

  Set among the mean streets and meaner people of downtown Los Angeles, this laughably clichéd dive into sexual masochism and hardscrabble survival replaces story with outline and characters with place holders.

• Andrew Barker, Variety

  It's tough to find comedy in a dead-serious, skid-row-set film about homelessness, sexual abuse, incest and the exploitation of immigrants, but the misguided A Beautiful Life manages to provide unintentional laughs by the barrel.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  A Beautiful Life makes little attempt to be credible or original. And the acting is poor.

• Michael C. Walsh, Boston Phoenix

  Unfortunately, Lau throws in one too many wrinkles, squandering our empathy by forcing us through a long-winded relationship involving betrayal and illness.

• Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru

  An amateurish, contrived drama that's neither captivating, insightful nor engrossing.

• Don Willmott, Filmcritic.com

  There's simply not enough for Maggie and David to do to sustain an entire movie.

• Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

  This intertwined tale of people struggling on society's fringe plays like bad community theater.

Read all 10 critic reviews