Metacritic reviews

This is a beautifully crafted and special movie to cherish, one likely to stay with you long after most of the so-called summer blockbusters have faded into memory.

Maybe what makesFlipped" such a warm entertainment is how it re-creates a life we wish we'd had when we were 14.

Flipped is the kind of small, special movie that wraps you up in so much warmth, humor and humanity that it will leave you wishing that stories like this weren't so rare.

Though the dialogue rings too chirpy ("Gee whiz!") and faintly anachronistic ("Get over it, man!"), the acting is wonderfully subtle, especially John Mahoney's turn as Bryce's grimly clear-eyed grandfather.

Reiner again demonstrates compassion and insight into young people's battles to acquire self-knowledge, but in his new film, too many clearly fictional characters and contrived situations bog down his story.

A well-intentioned family pic about first love that's overly concerned with period details and life lessons, rather than the genuinely sweet characters at its center.

Far more interesting than Juli and Bryce's banal budding love is Reiner and co-scripter Andrew Scheinman's sensitive exploration of how parents shape their children.

Worse, he (Reiner) vacuum-seals it all in a patronizingly wholesome package, like an extended episode of "The Wonder Years" with all the wonder sucked out.

Reiner, in very broad strokes, works in issues of poverty, thwarted dreams and family obligation, and almost pulls it off, thanks to Anthony Edwards, Aidan Quinn, Rebecca De Mornay, Penelope Ann Miller and John Mahoney, who impart humor and humanity to thinly sketched characters.

I can't say anything nice about Flipped, a painfully clumsy adaptation of a tween novel by Wendelin Van Draanen.