Metacritic-Rezensionen

Better films about senior citizens displaced by a greedy housing market have been made. (Anyone for Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D, or Ira Sachs’ recent heartbreaker Love is Strange, about a homeless elderly gay couple?) But the humorous script by Charlie Peters (based on a novel by Jill Ciment), fluidly directed by Richard Loncraine, makes this an agreeable experience.

Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton have unexpectedly great chemistry in this warm and funny comedy.

If 5 Flights Up is worth seeing, it’s primarily for the pleasure of Keaton and Freeman’s company, plus maybe for some tips on buying and selling an apartment.

Freeman is funny as a lovable crank, but Keaton’s neurotic performance wears thin.

Director Richard Loncraine (Wimbledon) and screenwriter Charlie Peters are able to carry this material to some unexpected places. It helps to have two of the most effortlessly charming actors in Hollywood as leads.

Ira Sachs, for all the tenderness of feeling he brought to Love Is Strange, wouldn't have countenanced the stacked-deck sentimentality that lies at this film's heart.

Nixon scores the film’s one laugh-out-loud moment. Nobody else generates anything more than a weak chuckle.

What starts as a somewhat charming — if prosaic — story of love in the time of gentrification inexplicably spends most of its third act mired in the finer points of apartment hunting, like a tastefully lit HGTV show.

The duo provide a bit of wit and warmth amid the contrived subplots and the self-satisfied moralism.

It's quite difficult to hate 5 Flights Up as much as a project this pointless and trite deserves, because of the attractive playing of the central pair. Keaton and Freeman share absolutely zero sexual chemistry, but watching them twinkle at each other and ruefully indulge each other's tiny mood swings is an experience so aggressively engineered for adorability it becomes hypnotic.