Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
What a pleasure to see a simple, finely tuned dramedy about real adults with real emotions in a real-life situation.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton have unexpectedly great chemistry in this warm and funny comedy about a couple who contemplate leaving a walk-up apartment in Brooklyn they've occupied for their entire 40-year marriage.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
The duo provide a bit of wit and warmth amid the contrived subplots and the self-satisfied moralism.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
A couple of pros, playing attractive characters in an amiable yet topical story.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"5 Flights Up" is far from perfect, but it's also undeniably touching.

Name : Pete Vonder Haar / Alias : Village Voice
What starts as a somewhat charming - if prosaic - story of love in the time of gentrification inexplicably spends most of its third act mired in the finer points of apartment hunting, like a tastefully lit HGTV show.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
What begins as a sweetly sentimental story ends up being cloyingly melodramatic.

Name : Isabella Biedenharn / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Based on Jill Ciment's wry novel Heroic Measures, the film is at its best when it sticks with the everyday .

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
If 5 Flights Up is worth seeing, it's primarily for the pleasure of Keaton and Freeman's company, plus maybe for some tips on buying and selling an apartment.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
The lead performances are so perfectly in sync that Alex and Ruth really feel like an old married couple who know each other's foibles and cherish every tic.

Name : John Hartl / Alias : Seattle Times
The movie ends just as you expected it to end, and there are almost no surprises along the way.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Sometimes you see a play and you can imagine it being a movie. Sometimes you see a small movie like this, and you can imagine it working better as an intimate stage play.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
It's good to see first-rate artists devoted to a film that doesn't pander to an unsophisticated audience with a thirst for violence and smut.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
5 Flights Up is a sweet film with a few nicely turned lines, some good jokes, and some very lovely dialogue. But it's not much more than fluff and air.

Name : Gerry O / Alias : Kid First
From the story line, it may seem that this film will be boring to kids. But, when I started watching this film I fell in love with it. Morgan Freeman's perfect timing of jokes and Diane Keeton's wonderful and priceless emotions make this film entertaining and heartfelt from the very start to the last second. It is a bit hard to say what the main genre is. Of course, there is a lot of romance between the two characters, Alex (Morgan Freeman) and Ruth (Diane Keeton), there is also that funny side that makes it all that more enjoyable. And, there is still a serious dramatic side which keeps you on the edge of your seat till the end. The story starts when an elderly couple, Ruth and Alex, live in a high up, massive apartment in New York City, Brooklyn actually. However, the five flight of stairs they need to take is getting more and more challenging so they decide to move to a location with an elevator. To add to the challenges, their dog is in the hospital undergoing treatment for spinal injury. The director, Richard Loncraine makes this movie feel authentic and rustic and also shows how current society stereotypes elderly people, how they truly feel about it and how wrong it is. The cast is wonderful and the acting is just superior with serious and comedy scenes mixed together and standing out all the time. I also like how they lightly touch upon problems of the past as well as problems of today. For example, Ruth and Alex got married in a time when bi- racial couples were not welcomed with open arms. Then it shows how today a gay couple is making an offer on a house. They submit it along with a note telling how they tried to adopt a child and finally were able to adopt one. It is something Ruth and Alex wanted to do when they were younger but were denied. My favorite scene is when they have an open house to sell their apartment and a huge crowd of people comes through, looking at everything and touching everything. Alex doesn't like it but Ruth tries to see the positive side but fails. I like that scene because it shows how the couple's life isn't perfect and also makes the film feel very real. Not only this moment does that but many others as well. This film has perhaps several moments of adult content but none that is too mature. I recommend it to kids ages 10 to18 and give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Name : Graham Fuller / Alias : New York Daily News
Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman are pleasantly entertaining in "5 Flights Up." But the movie's far too pleasant for far too long.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Underscores the notion that what we're watching isn't merely the life of a complicated woman, but rather the actions and choices of that woman as seen through a man's eyes and a man's judgment.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Arterton proves again that she has starrier magnetism in movies that slow down enough to appreciate it, even if she winds up as much a symbol as her own person.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
A tad too slapstick and not nearly modern enough in its social sensibilities to offer a truly updated version of Madame Bovary, Gemma Bovery still has its charms .

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
We are offered a handful of sketchy observations on the extent to which art either does or does not mimic life. These are, at best, unchallenging, and would have drawn barks of laughter from the derisive Flaubert.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Christophe Beaucarne shoots the countryside, the baked goods, Gemma and Martin's playful dogs, and of course Arterton with sun-dappled rapture. No 19th-century novelist saw the world like this.

Name : Jay Weissberg / Alias : Variety
The script flattens the main characters and makes one nostalgic for Flaubert's observational acumen.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Fans of "Madame Bovary" might enjoy the chance to nod knowingly at references to the novel, but that's not enough to sustain a feature .

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The whole contrivance falls flat in the end.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
Think of "Gemma Bovery" as an airy puff pastry, dripping with honey.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
After a while, the film feels more like a cute conceit that hasn't really been developed further. It's intriguing, and very well-acted, but empty.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
A transmogrified Flaubert, recast, upturned and rich with observational and satirical contemporary details.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Literary obsession proves to be a weak spine for this wry French drama.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
As pure entertainment it certainly does the job, although much of the text's existential weight is lost in the process.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is the first Fontaine movie I've seen that qualifies as lightweight.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Like Chabrol, Fontaine has a way of making you laugh, on an off, for 90 minutes, before leaving you feeling a little queasy from too much truth.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
A somewhat reserved but sensual and gratifying movie that finds and polishes connections between literature and the screen while further catapulting the wonderful British actress Gemma Arterton several notches up the ladder toward international stardom.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The novel, of course, is one of the towering achievements in literature, and this trivial movie has no idea what to do with it.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Laden with witty ironies, the film by Anne Fontaine suggests men may not play exactly the roles they think they do in women's lives.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Anne Fontaine's Flaubert-inspired meta-pleasure Gemma Bovery takes as its subject the act of watching the lives around us - and of wishing those lives were literature.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
How is it possible that such blatant male wish fulfillment came from a female director and a graphic novel by a woman, writer-artist Posy Simmonds?

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
A nice little gem for anyone intrigued by the concept of having fun with a giant of 19th century literature.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
The scenery's lovely and the bread-kneading surprisingly erotic.