Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Film-Quality
Review: I really enjoyed this film and felt it was DEFINITELY not your regular cliched story of an ugly duckling transformation to pretty girl variety, nor should it be relegated to that category. It had several more layers to it than that, and people accustomed to watching a heartfelt, quality film would recognize that. In fact, I think the editorial viewer for this site who called it "self-absorbed" on Streisand's part, must have been watching another movie when he stated:"Her character constantly gazes upon her own reflection and is told at least a dozen times, one way or another, just how attractive she is. One wants to shout out, we get it already--you're pretty!" What was he talking about? The entire film had her mother and sister nagging her about her sloppy and ugly appearance and constantly telling her how unattractive she was! And the reason she was constantly gazing at the mirror at her face was because she was critiquing it! She was critical of her own appearance, because she didn't feel attractive. She was by no means gazing at her reflection out of vanity! That much was definitely clear to anybody who actually paid attention to the film. And by the way, in case anybody has skipped the title, it's called "The Mirror Has Two Faces", which explains the metaphor of her constantly looking in the mirror, and mirrors constantly being shown throughout the film even when she's not gazing into them, to demonsrate the symoblism of the film's title. The mirrors were certainly not there to demonstrate how beautiful Barbra Streisand was! On the contrary, it was pointing out that she was NOT the conventional beautiful woman (in contrast to Elle Macpherson's character). Perhaps people's personal opinions about the actress interfere with their opinion on the film, which I really found to be exceptional. The issues the film addressed- a culture absorbed with perfection and external beauty-was very well incorporated into the film. I thought it was one of the more intelligent films I have seen in some time.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Romantic Comedy!!!
Review: I've never been a big fan of Barbra's, but in this movie I love her! She's wry and funny and I think she's got great chemistry with Jeff Bridges. You truly wonder how Greg (Bridges) feels about her. There's a great "seduction" scene where the chemistry and passion are obvious. I'll leave it at that. There are a lot of humorous scenes and it kept me in giggles (wry wit, awkward situations, etc.). I LOVE IT! As for reviewer who didn't like the Rose improvement: so what? Rose learns she IS beautiful...she just never tried to show it off. She earned the right to show it off. Babs is great in this movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Clever and cute.
Review: I've never watched any other Barbra Streisand movies, and I don't listen to much of her music, but this movie struck a chord in me--I LOVE IT! Lauren Bacall and Mimi Rogers really make the movie. They play Rose's (Barbra) extremely vain mother and sister, and they are truly funny. The movie is full of humor--not exactly high-brow, but well above the usual un-intelligent jokes in so many movies these days. The more I watch it, the more funny moments I catch! There is some dialogue that gets a tad bit too deep for this movie, but it's limited enough that you may not even notice. Don't look to this movie for nuggets of infinite wisdom, but for a cozy night with popcorn and a blanket, it's a winner. It's not for you if you don't like chick flicks. But if you have an affinity for corny, cute movies, this one might be for you! And finally, it hardly hurts to have Pierce Brosnan in the movie!
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining yet so good
Review: My former hair stylist recommended this movie to me, and I bought it off her recommendation, and I haven't regretted the purchase.It is sooo sexy, that they didn't have to take off their clothes. It is one of my all time favorites and give it all thumbs up. Betty Bacall steals the show as the vain,manipulative mother. I was mad when they tried to control Rose's eating habits and all. Then Mimi Rogers describing without no shame of her fantasies on the lunch line gets a kick out of me. IT is good
Rating: 
Summary: -a real stinker
Review: I love Barbra Streisand and am a huge fan from the sixties. She has made some wonderful movies, starting with her fabulous film debut, Funny Girl. This one though is a real stinker. If you want a funny Streisand movie see "The Owl and The Pussycat", You'll laugh your head off. But beware of this one. Ouch! Lauren Bacall is good but Streisand is uncommonly not funny. If I could give it no stars I would.
It's stupid, dumb and a real stinker. sorry Babs!, but I still love ya. S-
Rating:
Summary: Bloody Awful
Review: I always felt that any moviegoer has a right to expect to be entertained at some level when devoting some hours with a video or in a theater. Let me humbly suggest to a movie fan..You would get more satisfaction out a film such as " The Deadly Mantis" than you would watching this abomination. I gave this film one star because a truly fine actor Jeff Bridges, is in this drivel...and because any film with sprocket holes is the result of someones effort...however misguided. CP
Rating:
Summary: wonderful
Review: Barbra makes so many good movies. She is wonderful in this role. I wish she would make another movie soon.
Rating: 
Summary: The amoral of the story is?
Review: It is a foregone conclusion that Barbra Stresand, the 1990s ultra-diva who even likes her own looks after so many years, would be incapable of producing a film unmutilated by her own estimations of what she regards as a boundless talent. Singing, yes, of course. Acting, sometimes. Directing...egad. Streisand plays Rose, a dumpy, mousey woman: a certain shapeless, colourless aesthetic indigenous to academia. Rose is very bright, however, fun and passionate. But her love-life is permanently flatlined, between her innate dowdiness, her total absence of self-confidence and her mother (played to perfection by Lauren Bacall), who has become Rose's de facto shrewish wife. Gregory, a fellow professor at Columbia, is a veritable Adonis when paired with Rose. A mathematician driven to distraction by sex, Gregory finally decides on a theory of marriage and partnership, based on having caught a fragment of Rose's lecture on courtly love (he leaves before hearing Rose ring out on the subject of passion) and on having required a full thirteen years to produce his book, which was constantly sidetracked by empty affairs. Jeff Bridges gives Gregory's absurd stutter and quasi-epileptic spasms at the sight of a pretty girl his very best, and he acquires a credibility as a math professor. Streisand's Rose, the English prof, resembles a strange conflation of a stand-up comedienne with a revival/ Oprah-style preacher/ talk show host. Streisand's fame and personality are so utterly monumental in popular culture that I found myself wistfully and shamefully reflecting on the fact of Babs's absence of a college education. The lecture she has Rose deliver on love and passion feels sadly like a wild guess at what a university class in the humanities might be like. If there are English professors with this sort of rapport with their falling-off-the-edge-of-their-chairs students, who cry out startlingly vulgar and inappropriate responses, I have seen them nowhere on earth. Streisand, the famous, unstoppable autodidact is, in a university context, the proverbial anthopologist on Mars. Streisand's portrait of Rose during the first 3/4 of the film is, apart from the disasterous lecture scene, one of the most precious and fragile of her cinematic roles. The dowdiness of Rose, mirroring the legendary insecurities of the younger Streisand, keeps Streisand the actress modest and controlled, fully in character. The autobiographical significance of this subject to Streisand, possessor of an exotic, high-maintanance beauty, is as obvious as it is deeply touching. Gregory chooses Rose as his partner and wife precisely because he feels no sexual attraction to her. Rose, however, is fully human, yearning to experience everything which Gregory strives to sublimate and repress. Their unfolding friendship is lovely and heartwrenching all at once. When the unappreciated Rose decides to metamorphose into the current Barbra Streisand, Streisand kicks off the character she has constructed like a pair of old slippers and lets her own pride in her appearance burst forth unfettered. From that moment on, Rose is no more, and we see before us only Barbra Streisand, star and, woefully, director of what comes to resemble an A&E biography, with Jeff Bridges as Streisand's real husband, James Brolin. At least the DVD has edited out the boom-mike that floated in crystal clear view throughout the film as I saw it in the theatre years ago. The mysterious boom-mike was a distraction par excellence: I spent an enormity of time wondering if ANYONE had seen the film before it was sent to the theatres. HOW could this happen? Under the Streisand regime? The perfectionist Streisand, with the relentlessness of a Bulgarian gymnastics coach, who drove her co-workers to despair with her mania for nearly invisible, inaudible flaws? The dangling jet-black mike, hanging there scene after scene, had to be some kind of nearly obscene commentary on Barbra's serene postproduction narcissism, a logical extrapolation of the the trajectory of her character development. I found myself oddly mourning the boom-mike on DVD, as if it had become as 'human' and entrancingly inscrutable in the theatre as Wilson the Volleyball in Tom Hanks's "Castaway". ROSE?....MIKE?....MIKE?.....ROSE?...WILSON?.......I'm sorry! Being director-boss-dominatrix, Streisand clearly had no one to point out the many problems with this film to the infamous perfectionist, which is saddening in itself. Let's hope Barbra never becomes objective about the final quarter of her film and notices that Rose ended up on the cutting-room floor and that the Empress is up on the big-screen starkers. At one point, as a capital-B Beauty, Rose/Streisand laughingly paraphrases an admirer's words, saying something like: "you notice now what you always liked about me back when it wasn't there?" The same can be said for Streisand's acting. I didn't realize how much I appreciated it, until it was utterly gone from the film. The moral is similarly convoluted. No one WILL love the wallflower, so you better get with it, join a gym and get a head transplant (as was famously said of the post-op Linda Tripp), in order that the worthwhile people in your life can discover that they always loved and admired you all along. Ladies, remember, your brain will only be set off properly by the highlights in your hair. I'll drink to that, as Streisand sings in her "Broadway Album" lullaby to beauty, "Pretty Women"....
Rating:
Summary: Worthless Fluff
Review: I love Ms.Streisand. I have been a long time fan of hers since the 60s. She has made some great movies but this one is a piece of worthless fluff. Not very good. Only Lauren Bacall saves this one. Jeff Bridges is wasted and Ms.Streisand should have known better. Make something better Barbra. Don't treat your fans to this stuff.
Rating:
Summary: "I finally found someone to make me feel complete!"
Review: Though at first it seems like Babs settled by accepting the marriage proposal of charming math professor Jeff Bridges, the two come to realize they really do complete each other in this romantic comedy. Stealing the show is mother-of-the-bride, Lauren Bacall, in her Oscar-nominated performance, embodying the wise-cracking, put-down spewing, disapproving mother so well known to many of us. Though we come to see her as a source of friction in the life of her daughters (Barbra and Mimi Rogers), we also see her arc over to helping Barbra fufill her dreams of realizing a true love match. Watch for Bacall's most poignant scene as she confesses the true nature of the marriage she had with the girls' father. It is here, in the more quiet moments of the film, we see Bacall's strength as an actor. As far as Babs' directing chops, she best identifies the strong dichotomy between her two main characters--the English professor, played by herself, and her husband, the math professor as portrayed by Jeff Bridges. She is kinesthetic, while he is contained; she is all about hands-on experiences, while he is more about removed learning; she is vibrant and funny; he is reserved and ill-at-ease with even himself. The scenes in which we see him falling more and more for Barbra show he is perhaps most ill-at-ease with the thought of having indeed found that special someone! The cast is rounded out effectively by George Seagal, playing Bridges' best friend, and a small part of note is played by Elle McPherson as one of Bridges' former lovers. For those who love a good romantic comedy, this film is a must! Nothing too complex, nothing too long, and nothing bad about this film! Even the song was up for an Oscar!
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