Rolling Stone
"...Sly, romantic fun..." 02/21/1991 p.47-8Entertainment Weekly
"...Warmly warped....[Parker] personifies the city's giddy spirit..." -- Rating: B 01/21/2000 pp.108-9 New York Times
"...Decent, intelligent, and sweet..." 02/08/1991 p.C8 Los Angeles Times
"...L.A. Story has a completely original spirit. It's wiggy yet deeply, helplessly romantic....The imagery has a spin to it, as if we too were being enswooned by it all..." 02/08/1991 p.F1 Total Film
"...A film which suffuses the world's most plastic city with a sense of wonder, giving this underrated feelgood comedy an irresistible glow..." 05/01/2000 p.120 Widescreen Review
"[A] thoughtful comedy about life and love in the city of angels." 07/01/2006 p.72 Ultimate DVD
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] sweet and surreal romantic comedy..." 07/01/2006 p.99 The Washington Post 8 of 10
One part La-La-land gagfest and two parts valentine (to Martin's real-life spouse Victoria Tennant), the movie has a disappointingly complacent approach. The satiric targets, from freeway shootings to new age nuttiness, are woefully familiar. The central romance, in which jaded TV weatherman Martin ("Harris K. Telemacher") pursues "interesting" British journalist Tennant, is so full of winking, offscreen compliments, it often taxes the threshold of acceptable cuteness...Ironically, Sarah Jessica Parker, in a narratively thankless bimbo role, exudes far more believability. - Desson Howe
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
The film is astonishing in the amount of material it contains. Martin has said he worked on the screenplay, on and off, for seven years, and you can sense that as the film unfolds. It isn't thin or superficial; there is an abundance of observation and invention here, and perhaps because the filmmakers know they have so much good material, there's never the feeling that anything is being punched up, or made to carry more than its share. I was reminded of the films of Jacques Tati, in which, calmly, serenely, an endless series of comic invention unfolds. - Roger Ebert
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