FILM / Critical Round-up

MADE IN AMERICA

'At first, the film plays like a crazy, crude farce. Then it flirts with issues of race, family values and cultural diversity, suffers a painful attack of high drama, and finishes up with everybody clapping their hands, singing and dancing.' Geoff Brown, Times

'The result is hardly great shakes. But the playing, especially from Goldberg and Long, is shrewd enough to carry it off if you don't think too hard about what's happening.' Derek Malcolm, Guardian

'. . . a San Francisco of brittle marriages but teeming wombs, where pinbright teenagers dash about the land searching for missing parents.' Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

APRES L'AMOUR

'Writer-director Diane Kurys can only ring dwindling changes on a soap-operatic plot of musical beds and frustrated motherhood.' Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

'Kurys and her excellent cast portray their curt meetings and fervent embraces, their deceptions and cryptic phone calls, with such precision that you keep watching . . . Diane Kurys continues to be inspired by the mess of human relationships.' Geoff Brown, Times

'An extended exercise in emotional masochism. It switches arbitrarily and confusingly from one unsatisfactory entanglement to the next.' Alexander Walker, Evening Standard

'What it lacks is any real resolution or catharsis, which may well be on purpose but still prevents the highly personal content from moving us as it might.' Derek Malcolm, Guardian

A FAR OFF PLACE

'It resembles Walkabout 2: The Plot Runs Out Of Ideas. We sense neither miles nor days. We feel neither thirst nor hunger.' Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

'Holds up on its own old-fashioned terms as a family film in praise of teenage courage, nature conservation and pretty photography.' Geoff Brown, Times

'Another film fit for a passable outing during the hols.' Derek Malcolm, Guardian

'Good, old-fashioned children's adventure.' Alexander Walker, Evening Standard