Ordinary Love - Movie Reviews (2025)

The film has a way of showing how even the fight for survival can be beautiful when you have love to see it through.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 14, 2024

“Ordinary Love” stays afloat thanks to Manville and Neeson, two seasoned actors with great emotional resonance and a natural chemistry.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Filmmakers Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn's Ordinary Love is a poignant drama.

Full Review | Nov 22, 2021

A lovely, understated thing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 20, 2021

"Ordinary Love" bears, in many ways, the most accurate movie title of all time - because it gently and precisely chronicles a year of crisis in the life of a most ordinary married couple.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 20, 2021

Don't expect dramatic fireworks - very little happens narratively - but prepare for this quiet film to tiptoe into your heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 20, 2021

I hated this film. I hated every minute of it, and at times it even made me angry.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 20, 2021

A veritable primer on how to come through a crisis without being crushed under the weight of sentimentality. In Hollywood terms, there is nothing ordinary about this love story.

Full Review | Feb 20, 2021

The well-paired actors immerse themselves in the script's quiet yet intimate moments of trying to hang on to what is positive in their lives.

Full Review | Feb 20, 2021

A film that never devolves into maudlin or sentimental territory, it captures a great, but quite ordinary love, perfectly.

Full Review | Feb 20, 2021

Even when Tom and Joan are at their worst, Neeson and Manville make it clear that the two love each other with a kind of unshakability that's quite extraordinary and extremely moving.

Full Review | Feb 20, 2021

The two directors have crafted the kind of fine, intimate human drama one expects from the great Mike Leigh, with warm, believable and brave performances from both, particularly Manville.

Full Review | Feb 20, 2021

Ordinary Love is a hard watch but the performances ensure that you are supporting these characters every step of the way.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 20, 2021

Certainly, the film's abiding respect and compassion will be much appreciated by viewers with personal experience of the sharp end of serious illness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 20, 2021

Ordinary Love avoids the pitfalls of many other films that deal with illness. It never shies away from the reality of the situation but finds tenderness in its character's humanity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 30, 2021

It's a film about an ordinary love that is truly extraordinary.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 18, 2020

An understated, exceptionally performed look at a very real relationship going through one of the hardest times a couple can go through.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 28, 2020

The devil is very much in the detail here, mostly avoiding the sensationalist clichés of the disease drama in favour of more nuanced and, yes, ordinary elements.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2020

This isn't an extraordinary story (but you knew that; read the title) but the relationship here is absolutely extraordinary.

Full Review | Aug 4, 2020

It's easy to take a great new performance from film and theatre veteran Lesley Manville for granted, but Ordinary Love's cancer patient Joan is one of her most physically challenging roles to date.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2020