the audience applauded

good back-story, and good acting

The acting in this movie is really good.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Never thought that there could be a Mike Leigh movie that I wouldn't like. But this is one. The thing with Leigh's movies is that the stories are for the biggest part just ordinary people in their ordinary everyday life. And it are the characters that almost make you feel like you are watching a documentary, that make them so special. This story is again a story with nothing much interesting. Two roommates that meet again. Half of the time in real life and the other in sort of flashbacks. But this time the acting is so very much overdone, that it is almost like I'm watching an American comedy, with just the fake laughs in the background missing. Apart from an occasional laugh, I watched it till the end as if I was sitting in the chair at my dentist. Just for old time Mike Leigh's sake.

Before you watch a Mike leigh Film you must first forget you ever saw a Hollywood Movie. the only thing they share is celluloid. Career girls takes place in a world so far from hollywood that its as different from it as a book is from a Play. Its hard to credit the acting in it as the people seem so incredibly real and yes it may appear dull and overly realistic for peroids but Mike Leigh never fails to hit the mark in what are usually quite short films. Sometimes the position of the mark is up to the viewer to decide but one thing is certain is these people will have to get up tomorrow cause lifes issues cannot be solved in a 90 minute segment. their direction may be a bit clearer of if it was clear it may be more confused. if nothing else as a man in my mid thirties it made me think of some of the people that flitted in and out of my life at various time through college different jobs and so on. and yes i could relate to the Rick figure , not every one will turn out all right. every 'Bum' on the street has had a past life and many of them very different to how you now see them Life can sucks but there is always hope and there no one better than Mike leigh to show that

As a life-long Mike Leigh fan, I first saw CAREER GIRLS on its cinema release a couple of years ago. No, it didn't make quite the same impact as (for example) NAKED or SECRETS AND LIES, but nonetheless it does boast impressive and detailed performances from its lead actors. Katrin Cartlidge's work was always intense and magnetic (I was lucky enough to see her on stage in Theatre de Complicite's MNEMONIC in 1998) - and her recent, tragic death from septicaemia in September 2002, aged 41, was a desperately sad loss to top-notch acting and independent film making.

I haven't got a clue why this film got such good reviews, especially in the press. It's a boring, irritating "film" in which nothing happens. The story is ludicrous: it centers around two ex-roommates/friends who meet again after six years. Their lives have changed, they've become more mature. We can see how they were years before, through a series of flash-backs.This is a film by Mike Leigh, who has been praised for making such strong character studies, in which the story is less important than the people. SECRETS AND LIES was in the same style and is maybe his best known film. Although this was also an uninteresting and cold film, it had something of a story in it. You got (in a certain way) a chance to know something about the characters. But this film is a total disaster. What did these actors for example eat: were they on speed or what? why did they act this way? The Ricky-character for example is good for a few unintended laughs , but I think the director told him to say whatever words came to his mind, so that he could mumble through the film.But the true uninteresting, even irritating characters are the main ones: the two girls. You never quite get to know them so you never get to care about them. The fact that they act as lunatics and talk the same way doesn't help either. It's almost impossible to understand the conversations, especially in the beginning. And what do they actually talk about? Does this have a meaning? The film is filled with such a stupid dialogue.I can't recommend this film to anyone. It's simply to dumb. And if you would choose to watch this film(and sit through it!), you got to ask yourself the question in the end: why in God's name do we need such a film? I dare you to watch it and tell me, cause I simply don't know what good these 90 minutes did to my life. 3/10