45
Metascore
10 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 60Washington PostGary ArnoldWashington PostGary ArnoldDespite the flailing around, the picture fitfully accumulates a handful of modest highlights and silly brainstorms. [03 Feb 1984, p.E6]
- 60The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelThis comedy has some wonderful gags and a lot of other good ideas for gags, but it was directed by Arthur Hiller, who is the opposite of a perfectionist, and it makes you feel as if you were watching television.
- 50Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrThe film gets in trouble, as most contemporary comedies do, when it runs out of disassociated gags and casts about desperately for a story to tell; here, the lonely guy premise is dropped completely for a series of more-or-less conventional romantic misunderstandings centered on a dull Judith Ivey.
- 50Miami HeraldBill CosfordMiami HeraldBill CosfordThere is more truth to the lives of people alone than Hiller and his writers have cared to admit, and, consequently, more humor. The Lonely Guy is short on both. [31 Jan 1984, p.B5]
- 50The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinIf you can get past the movie's aimlessness and its visual drabness, it has its share of isolated laughs.
- 50The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jay ScottThe Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jay ScottMostly I laughed at the idea that Steve Martin could ever understand what it means to be a lonely guy, and that Arthur Hiller, who directed this, or Neil Simon, who adapted it, or Ed Weinberger and Stan Daniels, who wrote it, could ever understand what it means to be a lonely guy. [28 Jan 1984]
- 40EmpireWilliam ThomasEmpireWilliam ThomasWildly uneven, but funny in a bittersweet tittery sort of way in places.
- 38Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe Lonely Guy is the kind of movie that inspires you to distract yourself by counting the commercial products visible on the screen, and speculating about whether their manufacturers paid fees to have them worked into the movie.
- 25TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA mindless comedy that's about as funny as a life sentence in solitary confinement.