Fresh and Exciting

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The tag line for "Crush" is "Three female friends behaving badly". I beg to differ. It's more like three middle-aged women complaining about men. This won't be enjoyable for many men.But now on to the good things. It's dramatic, it's sad, it's funny and it combines all those elements with beauty. It's primarily about Kate (Andie MacDowell) trying to find love. MacDowell stands out in this film. She does have two best friends played by Imelda Staunton and Anna Chancellor but to me they were just annoying and continuously acted inappropriately.But then into Kate's life comes Jed (Kenny Doughty). The entire theatre audience sighed as Doughty appeared on the screen. Very handsome, and he had the smouldering stare down pat as he melted our hearts. I had predicted that he would go on to be a star, and that might still happen, but slowly, as he toils around in some small roles.The film was shot beautifully with the location in England being spectacular. The filmmakers also made a number of beautiful subtle contrasts to the men in Kate's life. These filmmakers definitely know how to make a great film. Too bad they don't know how to write characters very well. Andie MacDowell's Kate is the only great character, unless you count Kenny Doughty's looks."Crush" is not for men, and only for fans of Andie MacDowell, Kenny Doughty and technically superb and beautiful film-making.

I was gifted with this movie as it had such a great premise, the friendship of three women bespoiled by one falling in love with a younger man.Intriguing.NOT! I hasten to add. These women are all drawn in extreme caricature, not very supportive of one another and conspiring and contriving to bring each other down.Anna Chancellor and Imelda Staunton could do no wrong in my book prior to seeing this, but here they are handed a dismal script and told to balance the action between slapstick and screwball, which doesn't work too well when the women are all well known professionals in a very small town.And for intelligent women they spend a whole pile of time bemoaning the lack of men/sex/lust in their lives. I felt much more could have been made of it given a decent script and more tension, the lesbian sub-plot went nowhere and those smoking/drinking women (all 3 in their forties???) were very unrealistic - even in the baby scene - screw the baby, gimme a cigarette! Right.Like I said, a shame of a waste. 4 out of 10.

What started as a funny story of three women in their 40's going thru a kind of middle life crisis and their bad relationships with men, then turns serious when an unusual romance blossoms for one of them. The relationship develops unexpectedly well, the characters seem real. The young man who's the love interest delivers some surprising twists and it's all very believable. We actually root for them and their beautiful love story… But just when the film could've built up to some real high class drama (the older woman confronting her fears and other people's prejudices) it whirls downwards into some really deranged nonsense, "pseudo" tragedy and plain silliness. The so well constructed characters and the very good performances get drawn into a not well chewed mess which is irritating to watch. It's a shame really, what had started well and could've turned into a really neat romantic flick, even a little jewel (with a good look on how these two people connect above all their differences and against all social conventions), gets wasted. It's almost as if we were watching two different films. Maybe the script was meant for a short film and didn't add up to the full hour and a half and had to be filled in? Anyway it could've been better written to have a coherent development and ending. What a shame.

I enjoyed the first two thirds of this movie, and hated the last third. Every movie has a message and this one was: Good friends stick together no matter how badly they behave towards others or themselves.Andie McDowell - in a performance I liked, because she seemed to have dropped her whiny, self satisfied, airs of previous roles - is a headmistress of a private British Public (ergo private) School, who has two close girlfriends who meet and trade "men" stories in order to win chocolate bars as a prize for the best story.One is a cop, played pluckily, by Imelda Staunton. The other is a Doctor, who is angry, foul mouthed and cynical; and as it turns out: spiteful.At a funeral Andie runs into an old pupil of hers, some 16 years her junior, who happens to be the Organist. Before the re introductions are barely over they're shagging in the Cemetery. This is the kind of movie this is. Hedonism is King, or is it Queen? She decides that this is a "man" story she'll keep secret from the girls, but it's soon out and they are not pleased. The Doctor seems jealous, while the cop seems concerned by the age, and class difference. Although why a cop should pull the class difference issue is beyond me! ***********************SPOILER***************************** When Andie makes the decision to marry him, the friends pull out all the stops to divert her, to no avail. (At this point I said to my wife: "I bet they (the writers) kill him off). Sure enough the Doctor convinces the cop to have her video her seducing the boyfriend. Andie walks in on the seduction, which unknown to her has failed, and storms out. In the ensuing fight, she kicks him out and he is run over by a truck while sitting in the road trying to put his boots on.That's the first two thirds, and it's not bad. The lines are often witty, if a little to self consciously so, but it seems as if we are going to attack the May - September love affair issue head on. It is not to be. The message is instead to be about how friends make up after screwing one of their own. Which would be fine if there had been a serious attempt to do so. Instead the serio-comedy goes all comedy, and darkly so! Andie walls herself off from her friends and then in a colossal show of thoughtless dishonesty she sets up the school's vicar to marry her. By this time we have seen her get sick and know she's pregnant and assume she is, perhaps, seeking a "father" for the child through subterfuge. As it turns out Andie has not only become deceitful, she has also become stupid, as she is unaware she is pregnant! The friends decide to intervene again, but this time for a good cause. No matter that Andie has set a man up for an emotional crash, but now her friends add poison to the gruel and have her "arrested" at the altar, by none other than her cop friend and her willing bobbies.Off they go to the Doctor's office where the pregnancy is revealed and in a quick, unconvincing scene, all is forgiven. A bad taste in the mouth is the ending! People behaving badly and stupidly and learning not a wit from it!