Swinging With The Finkels (2011)

Critic Reviews

• Leslie Felperin, Variety

  A contempo contribution to the august British tradition of lame, unfunny sex comedies.

• Brent Simon, Shockya.com

  Evinces no particular reason for existing other than to provide its pleasant but half-heartedly invested cast with paychecks, and serve as the answer for the trivia question of in which film Mandy Moore mock-masturbates with a cucumber.

• Peter Sobczynski, eFilmCritic.com

  Imagine the world's longest, lamest and smuttiest episode of the redoubtable TV classic "Love, American Style" and you have only begun to conceptualize the mind and genital-numbing horror that is "Swinging with the Finkels."

• Brian Orndorf, BrianOrndorf.com

  An occasionally loathsome sitcom starring two miscast leads doing their chipper best to make this malarkey profound.

• MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher

  [E]xcruciatingly wrongheaded and outdated... [T]reats women like mysterious creatures from the depths of the Victorian age and marriage like an extended standup routine from the 1970s...

• Rob Humanick, Projection Booth

  It helps if you don't look directly at it.

• Erik Childress, eFilmCritic.com

  If you make it to the so-called happy ending, think aloud if Swinging with the Finkels would have lived up to its name better if the titular couple ended their relationship on the business side of a noose.

• Mike McGranaghan, Aisle Seat

  I'm right down the middle on this one. It's not great, but it's not terrible either.

• Eric Monder, Film Journal International

  Likeable leads can't save this dreary sex comedy.

• Blake French, Filmcritic.com

  a bit crude for its own good

• Diego Costa, Slant Magazine

  Marriage, in the film, is the necessary evil we all must figure out how to endure in order to be happy or, at least, feel normal.

• Neil Rosen, NY1-TV

  I'm shocked that this movie, which opens next week, even got a theatrical release and didn't go straight to DVD. Even more amazing is that it got made in the first place.

• Emma Dibdin, Total Film

  Brits and sex comedies have never been easy bedfellows (Sex Lives Of The Potato Men, anyone?), and this laugh-free effort is no exception.

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  The film tries for a kind of pawky comedy that tells some kind of truth. But a mediocre screenplay doesn't help and only a few moments work as well as they might.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  It fails miserably, with gags lifted from Viz, and morality moments cut and pasted from the problem pages of Marie Claire. As for the casting, boy, have I got news for you.

• Xan Brooks, Guardian [UK]

  Short of having a urethral swab or inserting a cucumber up yourself, it's hard to imagine a more queasy form of torture than this dismal British sex comedy - about a man who has a urethral swab and a woman who inserts a cucumber up herself.

• David Aldridge, Radio Times

  Dear, oh dear - there should be a law banning British directors from making so-called sex comedies.

• Tim Evans, Sky Movies

  A rubbish sex romp.

• Robbie Collin, News of the World

  You wouldn't wish the supporting cast on a film made by your worst enemy. They include the dad from the sixth Beethoven movie (yeah - somehow they got him), Angus Deayton with his bum hanging out, the mummified remains of Jerry Stiller.

Read all 19 critic reviews