When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested -- with an admonition -- to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways.
In the best dramedies, of course, laughter and tears alternate seamlessly and gracefully, and you leave both entertained and enlightened. Alas, this isn't that film.
– Jocelyn Noveck,
Associated Press,
23 Oct 2014
fresh:
Once in awhile, a reviewer's darkest suspicions about a film butt up against a sneaky pleasure in its incidental epiphanies. I confess to being conflicted.
– Richard Corliss,
TIME Magazine,
16 Oct 2014
rotten:
Occasionally, Hollywood will step forward with a family drama that actually manages to tinker with actual pain... "This Is Where I Leave You" has no edge, no darkness, no texture, no character to speak of.
– Witney Seibold,
TheWrap,
1 Oct 2014
rotten:
The most charitable thing you can say about This Is Where I Leave You is that it is resolutely innocuous -- a nothing of a movie, neutered and sanitary.
– Calum Marsh,
Village Voice,
25 Sep 2014
rotten:
Mawkish, self-satisfied and false, This Is Where I Leave You strenuously attempts to wring poignancy from its familial clashes and catharsis. More often, it's cringe-inducing.