Metacritic reviews

Director Shaka King has made a film of big laughs and big heart that makes one long for one long green detour without pandering to the pot-hawks who, unrelatedly, also like the lowest-common-denominator appeal of most pot films without realizing they’re being patronized.

Debut writer-director Shaka King dramatizes her characters' descent into disarray with disarming intimacy.

The movie has a certain dark charm, and often feels like early Spike Lee in its energetic depiction of working-class Bed-Stuy folk.

The sights, sounds and sociological quirks of Lyle's and Nina's particular circle of existence are what give Newlyweeds its indie resonance, less a city symphony than an urban alt-fugue.

Going neither in the direction of Reefer Madness nor a Cheech and Chong movie, it's both funny and serious, and its depictions of pot-smoking could be read as either promotional or cautionary.

Despite the hard lessons learned, King seems to have a pretty deep appreciation for Lyle and Nina’s drug of choice — and you’ll probably enjoy the movie a little more if you feel the same. Just think twice if you’re planning to sneak some homemade brownies into the theater when you see it.

At times, it’s surprisingly compelling, thanks to King’s surefooted direction of actors and well-honed formal sense; while the movie’s execution never quite makes up for its conception, it does elevate it above, well, just being the sort of movie that would be called Newlyweeds.

Newlyweeds, for all its freshness, never really lands. It remains suspended in a haze of secondhand smoke.

Newlyweeds looks and sounds primo. Storytelling-wise, however, it’s more than one toke over the line.

Writer-director Shaka King clearly knows this world, perhaps too well, but making pot use, or denial, the focus of nearly every scene becomes tedious.