Metacritic reviews

This movie is not a collection of parts from other films. It's an original, and what it does best is show how strangers can become friends, and friends can become like family.

What matters more is that Ms. Goldberg, along with her co-stars Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore, is so sharp, funny and wholehearted that this film creates an unexpected groundswell of real emotion.

There are no real surprises, and it's arguable whether three such disparate souls as these would, in reality, bond so well. But the acting is flawless, the principals fleshing out their characters far beyond their hastily sketched stereotypes.

It's so shamelessly obliging that just about every audience of whatever stripe will find something to like in it at least some of the time. It's a confoundingly enjoyable movie because, by all rights, it should be terrible.

Boys on the Side is surprisingly effective, although its narrative often advances awkwardly.

Its one flaw occurs when the film concocts a fake conflict between the women in an attempt to add some drama. The plot device doesn't do great damage, but it is enough to keep the film from being a hands-down four-star movie.

The movie is generally entertaining, if only because the three primary characters capture the audience's sympathy, but the story doesn't contain much honest drama.

Here he has Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker, Drew Barrymore and James Remar to distract us from the depths to which Ross habitually stoops in the never-ending quest to reacquaint an audience with its cheapest emotions.

The movie tries to outdo "Thelma and Louise" by upping the number of heroines, but it lacks the moral seriousness to tackle its sensitive material.

Roos and director Herbert Ross pave the long and grinding road to self-fulfillment with miles and miles of counterfeit poignancy.