Metacritic reviews

Sets you nearer than theater permits -- and further back than most movies dare. A magic vantage.

The film is worth seeing for Sorvino alone. The actress hasn't been this good since Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite," a role that couldn't be more dissimilar.

The always reliable Kingsley and Shaw are hilarious, and if the movie isn't quite a triumph, it's still far better than the junk food currently cluttering movie screens.

The story, based on an 18th century French play by Pierre Marivaux, is the sort of thing that inspired operas and Shakespeare comedies: It's all premise, no plausibility, and so what?

Indeed, a triumph of love: love of performance, love of joy, and, above all else, love of love itself.

Playful as it is, Clare Peploe's adaptation of Pierre Marivaux's romantic comedy coughs and sputters on its own postmodern conceit.

It could have been something special, but two things drag it down to mediocrity -- director Clare Peploe's misunderstanding of Marivaux's rhythms, and Mira Sorvino's limitations as a classical actress.

Triumph of Love, Marivaux's 270-year-old romantic comedy, is a beguiling trifle, a gauzy, teasing inquiry into the fungibility of emotions.

However charming Kingsley and Shaw are as the lovestruck pawns and Sorvino as the advancing queen, the premise is less playful than played-out.

Shaw and Kingsley both create crisp, comic performances, but Sorvino remains a problem throughout. Her physical transformation falls short of the "Boys Don't Cry" standard, to put it mildly.