Rotten Tomatoes reported 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 92 reviews, with the website's critics consensus reading, "
Starting Out in the Evening features sharp dialogue and moving performances from the talented Frank Langella and Lili Taylor."
Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 78 out of 100, based on 33 reviews.
A.O. Scott of
The New York Times observed, "Even though it is less populous than Mr. Morton’s novel . . . the adaptation . . . rarely feels unduly claustrophobic or rarefied. Allusions and incidents that evoked the milieu of Leonard’s younger days, and the texture of his mind, have been pruned away. But in their place is the marvelous fact of Mr. Langella, who carries every nuance of Leonard’s experience — including his prodigious, obsessive reading — in his posture and his pores . . . And what is so remarkable about [him] is that he seems to hold Leonard’s intellectual cosmos inside him, to make it implicit in the man’s every gesture and pause."
Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times rated the film four out of four stars and commented, "The movie is carefully modulated to draw us deeper and deeper into the situation, and uses no contrived plot devices to superimpose plot jolts on what is, after all, a story involving four civilized people who are only trying, each in a different way, to find happiness."
Mick LaSalle of the
San Francisco Chronicle said the original novel's appeal was in "the simple but elegant prose and in the way Morton lets us see into the thought processes of his characters. Neither of those elements translates into a visual medium, and so anyone adapting this novel was sure to face a challenge. Unfortunately, director and co-writer Andrew Wagner compounds the difficulty by wallowing in the story's bleakness and settling for sentimental gestures from his actors. Frank Langella is the single big exception on the acting score . . .
Starting Out in the Evening has the feeling of a film in which the actors, left to direct themselves, played into their own self-indulgent instincts, and the only one who resisted was the old pro who knew better."
Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone called the film "remarkable" and said "Langella delivers a master class in acting [with a] deeply felt portrait of a lion in winter." Meghan Keane of
The New York Sun stated, "The glowing accolades that the filmmakers attempt to bestow on the novelist Brian Morton ultimately result in an undercooked product . . . [T]he film is unable to re-create the delicate balance of emotions that Mr. Morton created in his book of the same name. The deference to [his] work is clear throughout the picture, but the interactions between the characters often fail to realize the soft sentiment that his novel achieved." Scott Foundas of
Variety called the film "a wise, carefully observed chamber drama," a "small yet deeply resonant pic," and "a sophomore film of unusual maturity and confidence – the work of a filmmaker with a sure grasp of his characters." Critics for
The Washington Post, the
New York Times, and the
Baltimore Sun cited the film as one of the ten best of the year. ==Awards and nominations==