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.
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.
– Christy Lemire,
ChristyLemire.com,
21 Sep 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:
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
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:
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.