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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:19
Rotten:15
Average Rating:6/10
Consensus: Enlighten Up! is a funny, warmhearted documentary that's uneven in spots, but thought-provoking nonetheless.
Runtime: 82 mins
Genre: Education/General Interest
Synopsis: Kate Churchill is a filmmaker and a dedicated yoga practitioner who insists that yoga can transform anyone. She decides to prove it. Her plan: select a subject, immerse him in yoga and follow him... [More]
While Enlighten Up! is ultimately just a surface look at yoga, it's still interesting, if not exactly enlightening, to watch the true believer and the jaded New York journo clash their way down the road to, one hopes, some sort of spiritual resolution.
While Enlighten Up! is entertaining and provocative regardless, it’s too bad that Churchill was so focused on whether Rosen was having his preconceptions shattered that she never stopped to consider her own.
What elevates the movie is the refusal of Rosen -- a grounded, non-believing pragmatist — to make the conversion to yoga spirituality and bliss that Churchill so wants for him, and for the arc of her documentary.
Moves toward an inconclusive destination while offering a few glimpses of bliss along the way.
In the end, both the believer and the skeptic end up less sure of their beliefs than they were when they started. Which must be at least a small step towards true enlightenment, right?
This is a peaceful kind of film, not terribly eventful, but I suppose we wouldn’t want a yoga thriller. Relax. Let it happen. Or not.
Top CriticEnlighten Up! is a low-key, charming trip.
A fast-moving, often humorous documentary about a young man's search for his "higher self" through yoga.
Entertaining but superficial tour %u2014it never substantively differentiates the myriad of yoga options breezily presented.
What's Rosen's dating life got to do with yoga? Nothing really, beyond a director's last-ditch attempt to show dramatic tension in her film before it peters out into inconclusiveness.
A pleasure in its open-mindedness. If you're up for a safe, light, skeptic's look into the many variations of modern yoga, take a peek.
Weirdly, it's the documentarian who seems to unravel throughout.
When she inserts herself into the action, she reveals only her own insecurity. It ends up being very enlightening, but probably not in the way Churchill intends.
An April Fool's Day release may be more appropriate than the audience expected in this random collection of interviews and experiences on the heart and soul of yoga.
Give director Churchill credit for including her own obstinacy in the movie
What Enlighten Up illustrates about the dynamic between filmmaker and subject is even more interesting than what it says about yoga.
Enlighten Up! explores its subject with a light touch and welcome sense of humor.
Top CriticAn alternatively funny and revealing flick which dares to knock some seemingly sacrosanct gurus off their lofty pedestals.
Has sporadically provocative and amusing moments, but remains poorly synthesized, somewhat unfocused and leaves you feeling underwhelmed and hungry for more enlightenment about yoga and spirituality.
Rosen makes a good correlative for all of us who don't doubt that flexibility and fitness are worthy goals but who cringe at some of the quasi-religious babble that seems inextricably bound up with yoga.
April 14, 2009:
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February 22, 2009:
Trailer & Poster review
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