the director of "An Education" and "One Day" shows little of her usual emotional insight in this scarcely credible look at homelessness and destitution in Manhattan
the capable actors do what they can, but audiences are more likely to glaze over than share the qualities of mercy and compassion so dutifully stitched into this diagrammatic patchwork
it's what might be heart-sinkingly called a modern-day fairytale - but the kind of modern-day fairytale that gets both halves of the equation wrong, giving you something twee and improbable, weighted down by a dreary yet unconvincing realism
great performances can't save Lone Scherfig's awkward melodrama; Zoe Kazan and Andrea Riseborough are wonderful in an otherwise stilted and inconsistent story about the value of niceness in New York City
even Zoe Kazan's stalwart commitment to the material can't resolve the clash of grit and whimsy in Scherfig's schizo moral fable. "The Kindness of Strangers" isn't quite the leading showcase she deserves...
by Kevin Maher [The Times (UK) ]
