Every year, Hollywood cuts yards of so-called romantic comedy from bolts of synthetic cloth. The elegant and exquisitely tailored “Shopgirl,” written by Steve Martin, based on his slender novel of the same name, and directed by Anand Tucker (”Hilary and Jackie”), puts most of them to shame. As it relates the delicate, almost anecdotal story of a young woman looking for love in modern Los Angeles, the movie reveals what is missing from most others of its kind: the fact of sex and the possibility of heartbreak, which is to say the very conditions of romance itself.

- The New York Times



“Shopgirl” is like “Pygmalion” for the upper-middle-brow business class flier. Which isn’t to say it’s bad. On the contrary, it’s smart, spare, elegant and understated. Especially the sex scenes, in which Claire Danes poses like an Ingres Odalisque in an extra languid mood. The movie positively blushes with class, taste and high-mindedness, and anyone thinking of seeing it just for the chance to see Danes naked will be sorely disappointed. She appears strictly in the nude.

-LA Times





Some audiences are just never going to cotton to a screen romance that has Steve Martin, 60, getting it on with Claire Danes, 26. To which I say: Grow up, people. The May-December thing worked in Lost in Translation and it works here, thanks to the perceptive and gracefully romantic script that Martin has adapted from his novella. This is not the wild-and-crazy Martin of Bringing Down the House, this is the Martin who writes for The New Yorker with erudition and wit.

- Rolling Stone





Shopgirl is a classic example of what we’ve always defined as a dateflick — a film that will delight one half of a couple but leave the other restless. And that’s exactly what we were.

- The Cranky Critic





Danes is winsome. Schwartzman is downright adorable. Even caddish Ray is amiable (and lost, so lost). Shopgirl is often funny and sometimes sad, and like its characters, it is mostly enchanting.

- Reel.com4409