A.O. Scott Doesn’t Like Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine toggles back and forth between the beginning and end of Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy’s (Michelle Williams) relationship, but, according to A.O. Scott, never convincingly covers the middle. “Mr. Gosling is convincing as the run-down, desperate, older Dean, and maybe a bit less so as the younger version, but in any case it is hard to intuit what connects one to the other,” writes Scott. Williams is “heartbreakingly precise,” but “saddled with too much” back story, her boyfriend and father both made into “caricatures of male insensitivity...Viewed from a certain, admittedly uncharitable, angle,” Scott writes, Blue Valentine looks like "a grim, dirty-realist, festival-circuit version of (and sequel to) Knocked Up.”