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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The

EMAILPRINTPaladin

Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The reviews
51
3.0 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 15 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 2 votes
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Romance

Written by: Tennessee Williams

Directed by: Jodie Markell

Release Date:
Theatrical: December 30, 2009

Running Time: 102 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: PG-13 for some sexuality and drug content

Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Evans, Ellen Burstyn, Mamie Gummer, Ann-Margaret, and Jessica Collins

Set in the Roaring Twenties in Williams' home town of Memphis, the film tells the story of Fisher Willow a headstrong young heiress who chafes under the constraints of proper Southern society, and who rebels by asking the impoverished but handsome son of her father's caretaker, Jimmy Dobyne, to escort her to the major social events of the season. The relationship is purely a business arrangement at the outset, with Fisher paying for Jimmy's time and attention, but when she discovers that she really loves him, she finds it impossible to re-write the rules and earn the affection she tried to buy. (Paladin Films)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

75

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The film has its rewards and one performance of great passion. That would be by Ellen Burstyn, as Miss Addie, who plays it all in her sick bed in a Tennessee country mansion with a debutante party going on downstairs.

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75

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

This film is the closest we're going to get to anything new by Williams, and it's a respectable effort.

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70

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

Despite Teardrop Diamond's rough edges, the filmmaker, who has spent much of her career acting on stage and screen, succeeds in transporting us back to that other time; capturing the lyricism of the dialogue and the fetid South that Williams so brilliantly envisioned where nearly everything goes to rot.

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70

The New York Times Stephen Holden

With its strained, quasi-poetic language that fitfully tries to soar, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond is a significant, though less than monumental feat of reclamation.

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63

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The script is half-a-fortune at best, and visually the picture is staid. But you stick with it, because it's Williams and because certainly no one since Williams has written this sort of embroidered dialogue.

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60

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The characters and themes are redolent of earlier and better Williams works, and the story unexpectedly putters out at the end--but seeing it now, you can't help but treasure the simple, lyrical dialogue and sure-handed narrative thrust.

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58

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

If you are not already familiar with Williams’s best plays and film adaptations, this musty magnolia of a movie won’t encourage you to seek them out.

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50

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Howard looks peachy, and actor-turned-director Jodie Markell sweats the details -- moonlight, honeyed accents -- but the brittle script resists restoration.

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50

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The story is a sketchy, dramatically muddled rumination on familiar Williams themes about the Old South and its brave, beautiful, rebellion women always on the brink of love, suicide or madness.

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42

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Whether Elia Kazan could have done something memorable with this script will remain an eternally open question. This film, though, is most effective as a reminder that Williams' works emerged from a certain time and place, and to approach them from another is fraught with peril.

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40

Variety Joe Leydon

The fragrant aroma of magnolias is undercut by the distinct smell of mothballs throughoutThe Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, an admirably earnest but curiously flat attempt to film a long-unproduced scenario by Tennessee Williams.

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40

Time Out New York David Fear

To her credit, Howard’s performance as a class-obsessed Southerner is decent enough to keep things from completely devolving to community-college level. But such weak work needs strong hands all around to guide it, and one pair isn’t enough.

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40

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Descends with dismaying speed into clichéd Southern melodrama.

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38

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Seems almost like a self-parody of Williams' earlier work.

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30

Village Voice Melissa Anderson

If Markell's instincts for script exhumation are questionable, she's the victim of even worse timing: Who thought releasing her film 10 days after Liv Ullmann and Cate Blanchett's praised-to-the-high-heavens "A Streetcar Named Desire" closed was a good idea?

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 3.0 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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