Metacritic reviews

So truly and exceptionally fine, a spiny and dispassionate little masterpiece of a marriage movie.

Strong performances and sharp dialogue distinguish Jeff Lipsky's melancholy second feature, which charts the two-year course of a "perfect" relationship whose flaws are evident from the outset.

Mr. Lipsky’s screenplay, a messy collection of fragments arranged chronologically, adds up to one of the most intimate screen portraits of a relationship ever attempted.

The script is overwritten and has too many themes--suicide, abuse, anti-Semitism--to support, but Nicholson does remarkable work in an unsympathetic role, helped by Lipsky's fine control of his characters.

What starts out seeming like a poor man's Woody Allen morphs into something closer to an American version of "Scenes From a Marriage."

Visually, the film is without flair or ambition, conveying no sense of atmosphere or mood. But the performances put it over.

At a full two hours, Lipsky's talky movie is more compelling in its second half, when the spouses finally get around to being themselves.

For much of Flannel Pajamas I wondered if the couple's big problem was that Stuart was secretly gay. Nothing so interesting - he's just a narcissistic control freak and she's off-puttingly needy.

Opaque acting, excruciating dialogue, and flat, affectless direction certainly don't help, but even in brilliant hands, Flannel Pajamas would still be a movie about two horrible, unsympathetic people doing dreadful things to each other, and learning nothing in the process. Why should anyone else have to endure it too?

The thing is, these chatty, pedantic, annoying characters are simply not interesting enough to follow for five minutes, let alone over two hours.