Metacritic reviews

Searingly well-acted.

Outstanding performances by Susan Sarandon and James Spader, working from a relentlessly witty script, make White Palace one of the best films of its kind since The Graduate (1967).

Glenn Savan's novel offered a stronger exploration of Reaganism and consumerism, but overall he's served well by this intelligent, involving adaptation. There's an unmistakable charge between the two leads, and an acute sense of their mutual confusion. Acting honours go to Sarandon, who brings off a complex depiction of vulgarity, defiance and vulnerability.

There's a lot that's good in White Palace, involving the heart as well as the mind.

Beautifully observed stuff, classy performances, and an occasionally exquisitely funny movie.

No more convincing on screen than it was on the page. But it is greatly helped by the presence of Mr. Spader, who was apparently born to play life-denying, icy-veined young heroes, and especially Ms. Sarandon, who has made a career out of coaxing such characters out of their buttoned-down ways.

Neither character is especially well defined, particularly if one discounts the strident overdefinition of their respective milieus, but as an old-fashioned Hollywood romance in which anything can happen, this is reasonably watchable, and at times mildly funny.

Spader and Sarandon make White Palace worth seeing, but too often they’re fighting the movie’s smugness.

Made up of tiny, non-nutritious patties, this movie is a buffet of Hollywood nothingness.

While this sort of thing may have worked in the '30s, by today's standards it's half-baked.