“Writer-director Tamara Jenkins … allows the movie its real-life bitterness without pushing it over into despair.

“…enough to make you hope that one of these days Washington will forgo such conventional genre trappings and unleash his own Do the Right Thing.

“There is only one way this could possibly have been entertaining: if Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman had switched roles.

“Ritchie means to be deep here, yet he’s never seemed so shallow.

“Some situations may be too tied to contemporary reality to receive a fairy-tale touch. It’s fair to say the illegal immigrant experience is one of them.

“If you’ve worked your way through every slushy, sentimental Christmas movie offered by the Hallmark Channel and are still able to keep your breakfast down, you might want to head to a theater to see this.

“Cusack … makes such a scene not showing off that he’s distracting.

“…the most cinematic elements of the novel are the weakest parts of the movie.

“…another example of a writer engaging in fictional wish fulfillment.

"There are more status symbols hanging from this family drama than a department-store tree has ornaments."