Bloated, overblown and essentially empty, Fellini's last hit movie skims over the surface of the lives it depicts, substituting manufactured sentiment for genuine feeling or understanding.
Comment
04/27/09
Amarcord (1974)
97
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:36
Fresh:35
Rotten:1
Average Rating:8.5/10
Theatrical Release:17-09-2004
Synopsis: Federico Fellini's AMARCORD, an acclaimed semiautobiographical episodic drama, examines life in a small Adriatic village just before Mussolini's reign in the 1930s. As the weather changes and... [More]
Starring: Pupella Maggio, Magali Noel, Bruno Zanin, Josianne Tanzilli
Director: Federico Fellini
Reviews for Amarcord
Top CriticFellini at his ripest and loudest recreates a fantasy-vision of his home town during the fascist period.
06/24/06
Top CriticThis veers from the heartfelt to the satirical, the scathing to the loving, the funny to the melancholy -- in short, it's everything that great cinema should be.
09/18/04
Top CriticThe bawdily amusing Amarcord dispenses with a traditional plot in favour of a series of communal set-pieces.
08/31/04
Top CriticFellini is so bountiful with incident and observation that he makes most other film makers seem stingy.
04/27/09
Top CriticAmarcord will make you howl with laughter and then choke back a tear. And all the while you’ll be building your own memories of this landmark movie.
04/23/09
Watching the movie feels like flipping through a cartoon sketchbook of Fellini's vivid remembrances and formative experiences.
04/14/09
I'm not sure how Amarcord played in the '70s, but now it feels like an affectionate parody of Italian movie conventions.
03/27/09
Federico Fellini's films beg to be seen on a movie screen. Their panoramic, overstuffed frames and larger-than-life characters overflow the boundaries of home theater; their exuberant, generous humor is best enjoyed in a packed auditorium.
03/27/09
Amarcord is Fellini's scrapbook of memories culled from his own life and it is completely engaging and delightful.
03/17/09
Orthodox Fellini lovers will give primacy to La Strada or La Dolce Vita, but Amarcord has its fans, and it's easy to see why.
03/13/09
It's one of the noted Italian directors more vibrant films that captures him at his most playful and incisive.
03/01/09
He [Director Fellini] leaves us with the hope that the human comedy just may be able to survive everything.
02/13/09
Top CriticWhat's so surprising about this film is just how loose and effortlessly enjoyable it is, despite all its ideas and images. It's one of the director's very best.
01/16/09
This Fellini opus is his most accessible to mass audiences since La Dolce Vita.
12/03/08
Top CriticUneven, loosely structured, and at times pretty vulgar as well as sentimental, but with some touching and lovely episodes.
12/03/08
This collection of vignettes loosely based on the director’s adolescence in Rimini feels as if its creator is vividly recalling every fleeting sensation of his early life.
12/03/08
What positions the film among Fellini's greatest are its punctuation points of mysterious beauty.
12/03/08
Makes me feel like a boy everytime I see it.
07/27/07
A memorable last chapter to Fellini's nostalgic screen reminiscences that began in 1953 with I Vitelloni.
09/13/06
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