41
Metascore
9 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 85TheWrapTricia OlszewskiTheWrapTricia OlszewskiCummings may have taken the easy way out here and there, but she largely delivers a film that kinda sorta makes you think, which isn’t a characteristic the genre is known for. Throughout, your feel-good chemicals will be flowing.
- 50The New York TimesTeo BugbeeThe New York TimesTeo BugbeeWith tender performances and dubious conclusions, this story is best appreciated as an explanation for why people seek out the false comfort of gendered pseudoscience. But by fitting characters into formulas, The Female Brain fails to observe the flexibility of human experience.
- 50RogerEbert.comChristy LemireRogerEbert.comChristy LemireBoth in front of and behind the camera, Whitney Cummings tries to breathe new life into the hackneyed, men-are-like-this, women-are-like-this style of romantic comedy with The Female Brain. The results are frustratingly hit-and-miss.
- 42IndieWireKate ErblandIndieWireKate ErblandThe formulaic approach to presenting each story — which ostensibly track different people Julia herself has studied, though she never interacts with them — is predictable, static, and wholly clinical.
- 40Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshLos Angeles TimesKatie WalshWith such a fractured narrative, it's difficult to get into a groove with these short, shallow and over-simplified stories.
- 40Village VoiceTatiana CraineVillage VoiceTatiana CraineDespite its strong cast (including Sofia Vergara, Cecily Strong, and James Marsden), The Female Brain has trouble making its characters more than one-dimensional.
- 38Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreCummings, working from a Louann Brizendine book, has rendered romance clinical and forgotten to drop more sugar water in the Petri dish. She was too busy clinging to that “explain the brain” conceit to notice. The movie’s just not that damned funny.
- 38Slant MagazineKeith WatsonSlant MagazineKeith WatsonThe Female Brain never seems quite sure whether it wants to probe the depths of its title subject or just make us laugh. And given the shallowness of its quasi-scientific blather and the tepidness of its comedy, it ultimately does neither.