Metacritic reviews

For all its contrivances, the film is cheerfully rude and surprisingly generous to the mothers, most of whom find sizzling new romances at an age when their American counterparts are reduced to sexless dithering or played as humiliating punch lines to jokes about horny old hags.

Although not quite as uproarious or as wickedly subversive as Pedro Almodóvar's more substantial body of work, Queens is content to scamper gaily in the wake of his achievements -- and to offer one more reason for old Franco to roll anew in his grave.

The movie has no higher ambition than to please a crowd; the fact that it easily does is proof of the world's heartening capacity for change.

The most remarkable thing about Queens, a silly but generous Spanish farce from the writer and director Manuel Gómez Pereira, is its unadulterated worship of middle-aged women.

A threadbare crazy-quilt of Spanish sex comedies, Queens wants desperately to be "Women on the Verge of a Big Gay Wedding."

A lively, well-packaged but meaningless amusement.

Pereira goes in for lots of time shifts and split screens, piling on the contrivances like so many costume baubles when a single string of pearls would do.

It's the kind of sprawling ensemble piece that screams out for a Pedro Almodovar, but in the absence of an Almodovar it simply screams out -- in persistent, tedious intervals.

The seasoned actresses are grand enough, but what a waste: Rather than elevate the material, they amplify its banalities.

There's potential here, but the script is entirely too, shall we say, Hollywood. There's even a dog-poop joke.