Reviews

The story doesn't really start until the two main characters start talking to one another, in the restaurant. Seriously, you can skip most of what precedes that, especially any of the stupid buffoonery scenes involving the kid. The tone of the movie changes completely once the kid starts talking with the actor, and I recommend fast forwarding to that point, over 30 minutes in. Too bad rest of my family bailed out before then.

The essence of the movie is in the conversations between the kid and the other main characters. Rest of the scenes enrich the story being told, as does the setting in the very special town of Antigua Guatemala.

The characters know more than they're letting on. Pay particular attention to talk about families. But once you realize what is going on, there are many "Why?"s. I would have like to skip the stupid beginnings, and expanded the backstories and provided more answers for all of the "Why?" questions. Among other more obvious questions, why was this whole situation set into motion by the head of the talent agency who sent the kid there?

There are some good lines, and evocative movie titles (e.g. "Garden of Suffering"), in the dialog.

Initially this movie is an interesting experience in sensation and perception, playing with what is silent and what is not.

But once you are accustomed to the gimmick, it is nothing more than boring movie with minimal plot stretched out extremely long. The plot idea (one star sinks while another rises) has been done before, and this one had nothing new to add. Additionally, the story was shallow because there was almost no interesting dialog enriching the plot -- any time there was a conversation that might be of interest, most of the time dialog cards were NOT shown, so we could only guess what they said, the result being a very simple cartoonish-level plot. There can be a lot of potential in this rising/falling star plot, but the story didn't mine any of that territory.

The only time the plot sparkled was when the director did something interesting with sound and sight about 30 minutes in (don't want to give it away for the victims of this scam who might watch it) - at that point I thought the story and perceptual experience was finally going to be interesting, but the director abandoned that promising approach.

Two weeks ago I saw Hugo, and the silent film excerpts and shooting scenes in that movie were interesting and enthralling, and the ones in this one were not. And the overall plot and camera work were much better than in this one.

I walked out of this after an hour. The only reason I am not giving it one star is that I can imagine even worse productions.

There are so many great aspects to this film, the entrancing outer story, the absolutely amazing visuals, the multiple shades of events shifting and overlapping.

However, the beautifully photographed inner story starts out promising, but was not as good as it should have been and went on too long .... the plot was only superficially reflective of and intertwining with the outer story, and just not very interesting (my companion got bored and fell asleep). Other story-within-story movies have had much richer and more involved inner plots that interplay better with the outer plot (e.g. the Little Princess). This inner plot was rich only in the visuals.

There is a section of the inner story which includes an amount of mostly gruesome violence that becomes tedious.

Additionally, there were some promising threads in the outer plot that were not followed through on. So it was amazing on a number of levels, but flawed and ultimately unsatisfying, though I think still very worth seeing.

The movie is very funny and well made. The acting is not over-the-top which makes it more effective. The writing does a good job setting up funny situations and the actors take just the right tone of restraint to pull them off.

But the story is stupid and pretty much every character unsympathetic because of how they live their lives. Thus it becomes a forgettable piece of fluff.

At times it has a strong 1960s feel in the story and presentation, and I found myself thinking of the Pink Panther ... not a plus or a minus, just an observation. Also I question some of the costumes, no matter how thin you are, flaunting the sagging of body parts isn't a plus.

This is one of the best movies I've seen in a long while. I am lucky that I was able to see it at a screening, and I will certainly look out for other movies from the director and writer.

It starts off low key and you're not sure where it is going to go. Then things get very intense dramatically. In a lesser movie this would be near the end, but in this movie it is just the beginning. At times it gets emotional with very excellent acting. The plot keeps changing in unpredictable ways, and who the plot is revolving around keeps changing also. Really well designed story and well directed production.

Apparently it is on the verge of release in the US. The version I saw in a US screening was subtitled (one of the forum posters asked if it would be dubbed).

This story, about people growing up in a violent and intellectually-impoverished neighborhood and what happens when they consider escape, is the kind of story that is made every decade or so for new audiences.

There was a lot to the film technique that I really liked, and the acting was great, but the story structure could be improved. In the first half you are watching crude teen-aged boys (with the occasional girl) saying F this S over and over, with little wisps of plot happening from time to time, but this part establishing the setting went on too long and got a wee bit tedious. Finally the plot starts ramping up and things start happening that involve the crude teen-aged boys. It is somewhat predictable, but what makes it more interesting is that it is autobiographical - the people involved go through some truly grim experiences.

There are many neat story-exposition & photographic techniques that I quite liked. However the direction could be improved. More things to advance the plot should have happened in the first part, and I got really tired of Robert Downey staring at the camera and twitching his face while saying nothing.

Unlike another biographical growing-up-with-gangs movie, City of God, this movie covers less about the lives of the participants (though there are probably more stories to be told), and doesn't rise out of its setting to be a fascinating movie. So if you aren't enamored with crude teen-aged boys in Queens, there is probably not enough in the plot to make this movie be of interest to you, unless you haven't seen movies of this type before. I had really high hopes for this movie based on recommendations and awards, so I was surprised that it was more ordinary and less inspiring than I expected.

Really enjoyed this movie, though it got a bit long at the end. Other reviewers have explained the film noir in high school bit quite well, so I'll skip that part.

One of the stars of this film, especially the first half, is the brilliant music. Very scintillating participant in the exposition of the story. I am really looking forward to the soundtrack.

Unfortunately, we found the dialog sound a bit muddy, and at times it seemed that one person's dialog overlapped the dialog after it, which impaired understanding. There was much wit in the dialog, and it was rapid fire, so it was frustrating to miss it. Don't know why the sound quality would have been bad since the music quality was so good.

Because of the heavy 40s jargon, odd names (Lug, Biff, Tugger, Dode, Pin) and cryptic quick code sentences, we both felt it was like watching Shakespeare, where you really don't follow everything that is being said and you're probably missing some good stuff, but you're getting the gist of things. Captions really would help!

Not good enough.

There are two levels of humor here, one involving film production, and one basic to the Tristram Shandy story. There is humor in this kind of juxtaposition, especially in the contrast between the actor of Tristram and his father, and the life of their actors. But it doesn't stand out as anything special, and the dramatic quality is too shallow, if you have been seeing other recent films. The level of humor of the Tristram Shandy story itself reminds me of Vaudeville.

The broken disjointed aspect of the story telling could have been fascinating (e.g. Memento), but in this case it acted as a barrier to getting involved in the characters and the story, because you jump away just as your interest is growing.

The funniest parts were contrasting the life of Tristram's father and the life of the actor, the womb scenes, and the scenes in the closing credits. Also, people in the industry might enjoy the behind-the-scenes back-story about actor rivalries, costuming issues, etc.

I feel this could have been so much better. As it was, I feel like I had endured an unpleasant theme park ride which was lightened up only by the scenes included during the credits.

Well, the production is wonderful. Really special.

However, there are a few basic plot elements that are so stupid that they detract from the film. Specifically, the supposedly mysterious deed that is slowly uncovered doesn't hold water, and also was so easily guessed that I was waiting for there to be more. Additionally the main character's decision to end up where he ended up seemed unrealistic to me, especially given the issues that still need to be addressed regarding the "mystery" in the plot. I don't know the book so that I don't know if these plot elements were in the book itself, or if the screen play left things out. It is hard to believe that Le Carre would do so badly in plot construction.

I strongly recommend "City of God" to see a much better (true) story done by the same director and photographer

Very clever & witty writing. Good production. It is about dreams and reality. It is about lonely adults and kids trying to connect with others, but for the most part misfiring or being out of sync or not understanding how to really connect. The humor and interestingness of the writing is the star (much in the same way that it was the exposition that made "About a Boy" so good, rather than the general storyline).

I really enjoyed the movie, though after it was over, I wasn't sure what the point was, other than depicting the plight of the human condition at various age stages of life. The wittiness itself makes it worth seeing.

The writer/director is also played the role of the aspiring artist. Saw her speak briefly -- in person she comports herself very similarly to the character she plays.

(Disclaimer: comments apply only to Part I.)

I was really looking forward to seeing this film, but found it too loosely paced and too emotionally distant. Occasionally the depiction of historic events is emotionally involving, but the depiction of interpersonal relationships is curiously distant and dispassionate. There are many relationships on the screen (love, friends, family) for which we never hear discussions of issues or thoughts and emotional reactions. We just see situations and joinings and partings.

I imagine that someone who lived though the historic events in Italy would be more affected by this movie. I found myself unsatisfied, and hungry to really see more about what these characters thought and talked about between themselves when the screenwriter wasn't around.

I think the loose pacing (and perhaps the weak character depiction) comes from it originally being a TV miniseries (from what I've read). It is too long & cold for watching in a theater. I was expecting something of the quality of Cinema Paraiso.

I did enjoy Part I, just not as much as I was hoping to based on reviews, and I do look forward to seeing Part II someday, but not right away.

There are much better movies of the time-shifting genre than this. For example Butterfly Effect, or even Slaughterhouse Five.

The first 40 minutes were so grimly unpleasant that I was wondering why I was sitting there watching it. There was no sense that it was going to be anything but, and in the screening I was in, some people left part way through. Finally the plot started getting interesting, but it was rather weak and minimal as time-shifting plots go.

Acting was good, direction was, say, "stylistic". Many pivotal moments were minimalistic rather than fleshed out. The movie would be much better if the set-up took only 4 minutes rather than the 40 it actually took, and then if a real science fiction writer had gotten involved in working out interesting things to do with the set up, rather than the same-old boy-girl romance writer that seems to have been involved instead. Also, some dialogs are overly minimalist, better suited to zombies.

p.s. I'm trying to reveal very little about the plot, but the movie's own publicity reveals most of what goes on, and rest of it is guessable from the gushy final sentence. What studio moron did that?!?. I'm very glad I didn't look at any of the publicity before seeing it, since the publicity description covers maybe the first 2/3 of the movie.