Uninvolving mix of fable, anti-war lecture and star-crossed romance.
Comment
08/16/01
Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)
29
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:114
Fresh:33
Rotten:81
Average Rating:4.4/10
Consensus: The cinematography is gorgeous, but the movie plays it fast and loose with history and the novel it was adapted from. Mostly, the movie fails because the romance between the leads strains credulity and the story is largely uninvolving.
Runtime: 2 hrs 9 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Academy Award (R) winner Nicolas Cage (City of Angels) and Penelope Cruz (All About My Mother) star in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, an epic tale about the enduring hope of love and the devastating... [More]
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Penélope Cruz, Christian Bale, John Hurt
Director: John Madden
Reviews for Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Despite the lush cinematography -- an intoxicating blur of blue ocean, gold beaches and green foliage that drips with natural beauty and unnatural production values -- the movie is a dense haze of ouzo, mangled beyond salvation by a ridiculous script.
08/16/01
Captain Corelli's Mandolin will find favor with nearly everyone who appreciates this kind of motion picture.
08/16/01
Pearl Harbor for the English Patient crowd -- a movie that reduces history, as well as eros, to a postcard.
08/16/01
Top CriticCage fumbles through the scenes with an Itralian accent reminiscent of his Moonstruck days.
08/16/01
Top CriticVery little about Mandolin is not in some way disappointing.
08/16/01
A sweet but flawed wartime romance with enough gorgeous scenery and quaint villagers to choke a horse.
08/16/01
A dramatic film, I'd wager, Roberto Benigni would enjoy.
08/16/01
With Madden's languid pacing and Shawn Slovo's sappy script, the movie begs for a one word review: Yuck.
08/16/01
There's little on-screen sexual chemistry between Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz, even when he woos her with music by seductively strumming his mandolin, and the conclusion seems anti-climactic.
08/15/01
Mandolin tries awfully hard to be The English Patient but instead is only slightly less ridiculously annoying than Pearl Harbor.
08/15/01
Billows in any direction that Shawn Slovo's gasbag script might blow it.
08/14/01
Not great, but you can enjoy the beauty of a Greek island without suffering its August heat.
08/13/01
Madden's film amounts to dullard's comatose trip to an isle ready for political upheaval with a little help from a mandolin-playing Benigni drone.
08/13/01
Comes engagingly close to being the assured romantic epic you would want it to be.
05/04/01
Top CriticThere are some great set-pieces and comic moments and enough drama and beauty for some pleasant escapism.
05/01/01
Latest News for Captain Corelli's Mandolin
September 15, 2005:
Critical Consensus: Critics Thank "Heaven," But Don't Praise The "Lord"
This week at the movies brings us a supernatural romance ("Just Like Heaven"), a jaded arms dealer ("Lord of War") and two experiments in terror... More...
April 19, 2005:
Get Ready for Another Dose of "Basic Instinct"
You've heard it mentioned for years, but production is (finally) about to get underway on "Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction." A follow-up to Paul Verhoeven's sexual... More...
June 05, 2001:
Initial test screenings failed to induce awe. Universal, hoping for an Oscar contender, bumped the film from its spring release so that Madden could recut it. 
More...
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