Levinson's dialogue feels fresh and improvised, yet it hits its mark every time, and the performances he gets are complex and original (particularly from Mickey Rourke, who plays a lothario with a late-blooming conscience) - enough so that Levinson's occasional forced cinematic effects cause barely a ripple in the smooth, naturalistic surface.

Dave Kehr

Chicago Reader

Diner is often a very funny movie, although I laughed most freely not at the sexual pranks but at the movie's accurate ear, as it reproduced dialogue with great comic accuracy.

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

This is Hollywood's most mature treatment of the '50s-nostalgia theme so far, and the most accurate.

David Sterritt

Christian Science Monitor