Metacritic reviews

The shock of seeing tough guy De Niro as suburban dad Frank, falling in love with suburban mum Meryl Streep after a chance encounter, was insurmountable for some film goers. But time and distance lend this modern Brief Encounter (with added adultery) a certain glow and De Niro and Streep repeat the chemistry they first showed in the Deer Hunter. They were born to act together.

At the very least, a warmly old-fashioned soap opera with several significant new twists. And for all its flaws, Falling in Love is one of those ordinary-seeming modern films that present unremarkable characters in the throes of all-too-familiar contemporary crises. When films in this genre succeed fully and realistically in mirroring the audience's concerns, they aren't ordinary at all. [09 Dec 1984, p.21]

There's little fire to the story, as directed by Ulu Grosbard, but the performances are strong and it's refreshing to see a romance that limits the lovers to one unconsummated bedroom tryst. [06 Dec 1984, p.50]

Falling in Love is not a bad movie by any means. It's not stupid or gross or cheap. It's been done with taste, but it's the sort of production that, even when it works, which it frequently does, seems too small and trite to have had so much care taken on it.

Falling in Love is a nice movie, a holiday movie with a Christmas setting with a happy ending. It's a Christmas shoppers' matinee and a commuters' guide to love in the afternoon, but not exactly an affair to remember.

The stars are Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep -- arguably the two most distinguished American movie actors under fifty. They have a genuine chemistry together on the screen and undeniable charisma. And that's it in this movie, which gives them not one memorable line of dialogue, not one inventive situation, not one moment when we don't groan at the startling array of clichés they have to march through.

The basic flaw in Falling in Love, however, is that no one in the film--including the lovers--seems to be in love.

Falling in Love isn't consistently dull; it's funny in spots, particularly during an opening montage of scenes in which the principals are doing their Christmas Eve shopping, and almost meet a bunch of times. But the shift from not meeting to meeting does not generate much drama. [21 Nov 1984, p.C1]

Can contemporary romance be this flat?

De Niro and Streep play two Manhattan commuters who fall in love, Brief Encounter style; but to invoke Coward and Lean's film is to realise just how thin and unsatisfying this one is.