Secretary (2002) Critic Reviews

Most love stories are bland and generalized. This one takes you deep inside the dance.Read the full review

In a movie as unrewarding as this, there's really only one burning question: When does the spanking begin?Read the full review

Has enough genuine laughs to eliminate the potential twitters and snickers, and it treats Edward and Lee as people. We end up caring about what happens to these two individuals, even as we smile and laugh at their antics.Read the full review

Lee's journey of the body and soul is something else. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes it strangely touching, a revelation.Read the full review

There's something appealing about an unapologetic love story set in an office that's only a few clicks off from looking like a fetish dungeon, and Spader and Gyllenhaal make sure that the romance, kinks and all, carries the day.Read the full review

For all the dolorous trim, Secretary is a genial romance that maintains a surprisingly buoyant tone throughout, notwithstanding some of the writers' sporadic dips into pop Freudianism.Read the full review

It provokes nothing but yawns, and the sex it explores is stuff everybody knows about and says, "So what?"Read the full review

Even without the surprise of seeing Spader going for laughs and getting them, Secretary is just too original to be ignored.Read the full review

A film of startling humor and feeling. For that, director Steven Shainberg, who co-wrote the script with Erin Cressida Wilson, owes much to two remarkable performances.Read the full review