Matching Jack (2010)

Critic Reviews

• David Michael Brown, Empire Magazine Australasia

  Beautifully played and powerfully moving, despite the sugary clichés.

• Jason Di Rosso, MovieTime, ABC Radio National

  Lynne Renew and David Parker's script is based on a wonderful premise, but the resulting film is uneven, straddling adult drama and family-friendly tear-jerker without doing either well.

• Julie Rigg, MovieTime, ABC Radio National

  It's melodrama, but powerful, with insights into the way cancer changes lives. I howled. Take Kleenex.

• Sandra Hall, Sydney Morning Herald

  Having begun as a well-meaning but uneven mix of medical melodrama and fraught love story with whimsical accessories, it finally locates its heartbeat.

• Leigh Paatsch, Herald Sun (Australia)

  The very moments that the film goes wilfully off-topic prove to be its undoing.

• Peter Galvin, sbs.com.au

  Matching Jack has a squirmy kind of emotional truth to it. It's funny, but it's not a comedy.

• Jake Wilson, The Age (Australia)

  If Matching Jack were a telemovie, I'd be tempted to switch off.

• James Mitchell, Trespass

  Matching Jack's conclusion is a hopeful one (some may say thankfully) but it's much too tidy and rushed, a pure cookie-cutter Hollywood happy ending that betrays the realistic, at times poignant portrayal of childhood terminal illness that came before it.

• Erin Free, FILMINK (Australia)

  While its premise is a painful one, this warm, surprisingly funny and deeply touching film never feels maudlin.

• Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile

  A gripping melodrama that explores a complex set of relationships amidst the intensity of deadly illness

• Louise Keller, Urban Cinefile

  Eliciting superb performances from her lead actors, Tass delivers a potent drama about human relationships and vulnerabilities

• Margaret Pomeranz, At the Movies (Australia)

  This is the first feature Nadia Tass has directed since Amy in 1998, and she brings great sensitivity to a moving story.

• David Stratton, At the Movies (Australia)

  There's a lot to appreciate in a film which is really about the very basics -- life, love and death.

Read all 13 critic reviews