Watching it is like trying to assemble a puzzle that's missing pieces: You can see the outline of a story, and some shapes fit neatly together, but there are undeniable holes.
Comment
06/15/06
Wah-Wah (2006)
52
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:66
Fresh:34
Rotten:32
Average Rating:5.9/10
Consensus: The ensemble cast is strong, but they get overpowered by the muddled stew of melodrama.
Theatrical Release:02-06-2006
Synopsis: Acclaimed actor Richard E. Grant's "Wah-Wah" is a semi-autobiographical "coming-of-age at the end of an age" story, told through the eyes of young Ralph Compton. Set during the last gasp of the... [More]
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Miranda Richardson, Emily Watson, Julie Waters
Director: Richard E. Grant
Reviews for Wah-Wah
Rare is the honest labor of love that doesn't have some redeeming value, and Wah-Wah ultimately wins you over with its sincerity.
06/08/06
The film "Wah-Wah" comes across as contrived and artificial.
06/04/06
We've seen these characters before, and aside from Ruby, they aren't all that fascinating.
06/03/06
Deftly balancing the end of British colonialism in Africa against a family's painful disintegration, Wah-Wah marks the impressive directing debut of Richard E. Grant.
06/02/06
The actors give it a spark, and Grant directs his fine cast with sureness.
06/02/06
Maybe the film is loyal to memory, yet it loses steam while gaining speed. The plot becomes a turnstile.
06/02/06
Both tragic and very funny, an accurate snapshot of adolescence and a glimpse of the transformative power of art.
06/02/06
What is understandably a subject of great fascination to [Grant] soon becomes a crashing bore to us.
06/02/06
The film is so well acted -- by Byrne, who makes Harry's internalized agonies and continuously carried torch for his ex-wife touching, and by Watson and Hoult -- that its more cloying moments ... are a moot point.
06/01/06
The characters may be based on real people, but they fail to spring to life onscreen. As a result, their histrionics often are laughable, like the over-the-top shenanigans in a Douglas Sirk melodrama.
05/26/06
Although it's based on a fount of real feeling and well-observed detail, and although a starry cast does strong work, the film is an overheated hodgepodge, clumsily staged and edited and smaller in its impact than you would wish from the sum of its parts.
05/26/06
In the end, the film isn't saying much at all.
05/26/06
Grant's personal experiences and his sense of British quirkiness lend the story a great deal of authenticity.
05/25/06
What the movie lacks in depth -- it's really little more than a glimpse of this boy and these people in this place at this time -- it makes up for in its well-observed details and sneaky humor.
05/25/06
A somewhat unsettled balance between domestic and epic, serious drama and nostalgic recollection.
05/25/06
The movie, in recounting all this personal and national upheaval, seems curiously, almost inappropriately nostalgic rather than subversive, revisionist, or informed.
05/19/06
Suggests a British colonial version of The Squid And The Whale
05/17/06
... this is a melodramatic, slow-moving soap opera filled with shrill caricatures.
05/16/06
An incisively observed, richly detailed and wonderfully unpredictable portrait of a young man's journey to maturity,...a singularly affecting movie.
05/15/06
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