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Movies / Upcoming / Niagara Motel
Niagara Motel

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Niagara Motel (2005)

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Reviews Counted:13

Fresh:5

Rotten:8

Average Rating:5.1/10

Genre: Dramas

Synopsis: In Niagara Motel, several struggling individuals cross paths at a low-rent motel in the tourist Mecca of Niagara Falls. They are not tourists and they are all, for various reasons, at crisis points... In Niagara Motel, several struggling individuals cross paths at a low-rent motel in the tourist Mecca of Niagara Falls. They are not tourists and they are all, for various reasons, at crisis points in their lives. The main characters are: a knockout waitress being recruited to star in low budget porn videos, a young couple with criminal pasts struggling to recover their child from social services and a middle class husband and wife whose marriage is disintegrating. The story also includes the woeful drunken motel manager, a prostitute working to support two children, a small time hustler, an underachieving staple salesman, the Serbian owner of the motel, his physics studying daughter and a social worker with a Christian bias. The needs of these people, their obvious failings and the unlucky conditions of their lives make them so vulnerable that they careen from the disturbing to the hilarious in a breathless instant. In this story, tragedy waltzes with unpredictable comedy in an intense dance of life. [More]

Starring: Anna Friel, Catherine Fitch, Craig Ferguson, Wendy Crewson

Starring: Anna Friel, Catherine Fitch, Craig Ferguson, Wendy Crewson, Caroline Dhavernas, Kris Holden-Ried, Peter Keleghan, Janet-Laine Green

Reviews for Niagara Motel

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1 - 14 (sorted by critic A-Z; UK critics are listed first)
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Extremely watchable, even though it's a bit fragmented and unfocussed.

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment Comment
10/29/05
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

Yates has given himself so many stories to tell here that his only plausible excuse for Niagara Motel's total lack of dramatic tension or laughs is a script that fails to include a solitary good line.

Full Review Source: BBC | comment Comment
12/06/05
Matt McNally
Matt McNally
BBC
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The quirky script is packed with good lines and off-the-wall moments and the stories are surprisingly moving in places.

Full Review Source: ViewLondon | comment Comment
12/06/05
Matthew Turner
Matthew Turner
ViewLondon

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | comment Comment
04/01/06
Empire Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
06/24/06
Time Out
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

I'm not exactly sure what compelled me to finish watching this so-called "black comedy," which is a little heavy on the black and far too light on the comedy.

Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | comment Comment
03/06/08
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid

An unfunny ensemble that completely wastes the talent gathered and the material it's based on.

Full Review Source: Sympatico.ca | comment Comment
03/29/06
Angela Baldassarre
Angela Baldassarre
Sympatico.ca

a tragicomic ensemble piece about people on the edge and love on the rocks.

Full Review Source: Eye for Film | comment Comment
08/02/07
Anton Bitel
Anton Bitel
Eye for Film

A blue chip cast is wasted in the painfully unfunny ensemble comedy Niagara Motel, about a gaggle of self-absorbed nitwits struggling to make ends meet on the Canadian side of the tourist mecca.

Full Review Source: Variety | comment Comment
03/24/06
Eddie Cockrell
Eddie Cockrell
Variety
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The actors are more or less on the same page, trying as much as possible to underplay this overheated material. But that doesn't help when the page itself is a scribbled sheet of foolscap crammed with narrative tangents and thematic jottings.

Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | comment Comment
03/24/06
Rick Groen
Rick Groen
Globe and Mail

An ensemble piece with spirit, vitality and a heavy dose of dark, twisted humour.

Full Review Source: Jam! Movies | comment Comment
03/24/06
Bruce Kirkland
Bruce Kirkland
Jam! Movies

...an overly quirky yet strangely compelling drama...

Full Review Source: Reel Film Reviews | comment Comment
03/26/06
David Nusair
David Nusair
Reel Film Reviews

The lives of nine assorted down-and-outers converge in frequently funny and sometimes tragic ways, giving Yates a chance to put his own spin on a template perfected decades ago by Robert Altman and reinvigorated in recent years by P.T. Anderson.

Full Review Source: Jam! Movies | comment Comment
03/24/06
David Schmeichel
David Schmeichel
Jam! Movies

Too many characters and so much plot that no single scenario ever develops into an absorbing drama.

Full Review Source: Toronto Star | comment Comment
03/24/06
Susan Walker
Susan Walker
Toronto Star
 
 
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