Metacritic-Rezensionen

I was surprised to find myself seduced by the film’s simple, sweet story, and amused by the sly indications that the Cleavers don’t live in the 1950s anymore.

Director Andy Cadiff and screenwriters Brian Levant and Lon Diamond have made a Leave It to Beaver that everyone can love. [22 Aug 1997, p.10G]

It moves along briskly and lightly, leaving little trace and doing no serious damage to boomer memories. [22 Aug 1997, p.19]

Leave It to Beaver is the sort of movie that could be described as good clean fun if it happened to be good or fun.

Fuzzily conceived and blandly executed, Leave It to Beaver is neither fish nor fowl. Not exactly a straight-faced homage to the classic TV series, but far short of an outright parody, this exceedingly mild comedy plays like the product of a committee that never reached a consensus on which direction to take.

Dead-on imitations of some of the characters from the television series created by Bob Mosher and Joe Connelly will seem pointlessly stylized to viewers unfamiliar with the old sitcom.

All but the most easily pleased kids will be bored as can be, and anyone who has fond memories of TV's Leave It to Beaver would probably rather not besmirch them.

Instead of defining and spoofing its period, its attitude and its social barometer, Leave It to Beaver just stumbles about in a bland, irony-deprived suburbia that denies the movie any juice or bite and renders the Cleaver family even duller than it was.

I wouldn't say this movie is actually harmful, but skipping it is probably the wisest policy.

The humor in Leave It to Beaver is doggedly bland, with a conventional story line that's no more inventive than watching four episodes of the TV show scrunched together and interwoven. [22 Aug 1997, p.F6]