Turturro's attempt to mix working-class magical realism and MGM romanticism is wildly uneven.

Romance & Cigarettes wears thin, like a moral for the titular addiction: Sure, there's the sweet dream of that first drag, but a whole pack'll do a body bad.

It shouldn't work, but there's something beautiful in Turturro's non-judgmental, almost affectionate, exposure of human love as the courting dance of clueless primates

When it succeeds, it soars with great abandon, and when it fails, it fails so grandly that we still want to applaud it. This is a madhouse of a movie.