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Broken Flowers
Focus Features


5.7

based on 39 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 132 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for language, some graphic nudity and brief drug use

Starring Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, and Julie Delpy

Resolutely single Don (Murray) has just been dumped by his latest lover (Delphy). Don yet again resigns himself to being alone and left to his own devices. Instead, he is compelled to reflect on his past when he receives by mail a mysterious pink letter. It is from an anonymous former lover and informs him that he has a 19-year-old son who may now be looking for his father. (Focus Features)

GENRE(S):	Comedy
WRITTEN BY:	Jim Jarmusch
DIRECTED BY:	Jim Jarmusch
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 3, 2006 Video: January 3, 2006 Theatrical: August 5, 2005
RUNNING TIME:	105 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / France

Grand Prixe of the Jury, 2005 Cannes Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A movie of uncommon sweetness and delight.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

No actor is better than Bill Murray at doing nothing at all, and being fascinating while not doing it. Buster Keaton had the same gift for contemplating astonishing developments with absolute calm. Buster surrounded himself with slapstick, and in Broken Flowers Jim Jarmusch surrounds Murray with a parade of formidable women.

100

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Exhilaratingly slow, which for many will simply mean SLOW... Those who can downshift appropriately, however, stand to be enraptured.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

An engaging exercise in mature poignancy, existential consciousness and deadpan drollery, Broken Flowers is a return by Jarmusch to the road movie structure of such films as "Stranger Than Paradise," "Night on Earth" and "Dead Man."

Slate David Edelstein

The ending is madly unsatisfying--yet dead perfect. This is a remarkable film.

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

Murray's performance is at once enormously generous and fiercely, concisely witty.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

It's a romantic comedy in which both the romance and the comedy are turned to such muted levels that any lower would require closed captioning.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Like a perfect, short-lived love affair, its pleasure is accompanied by a palpable sting of sorrow. It leaves you wanting more, which I mean entirely as a compliment.

Newsweek David Ansen

Funny, bittersweet, its understatement yielding surprising depth charges, Broken Flowers is a triumph of close observation and telling details.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Murray and Jarmusch, two modern masters of minimalism, triumphantly join forces in Broken Flowers, a bittersweet tour de force about a wealthy, deeply depressed lothario.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

With elegant restraint the film subtly intimates the wintry dead end-twilight years bereft of love, partner, or vocation-that may be in store for its aged lover man. (Payne's "About Schmidt" did too, when not gorging snidely on idiot Americana.)

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Broken Flowers may be too low-key for laugh junkies, but Jarmusch fills his sharply observed comedy with wonderful mischief. The mix of humor and heartbreak brings out the best in Murray.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A dark subject certainly, but in Murray's bouquet-bearing hands, it can still hand us a laugh.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

This is not a perfect picture, but it’s a soulful one that offers a lot of pleasure and even a kind of wisdom.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's a consciousness-raising personal odyssey in the tradition of such recent indie hits as "Sideways" and "About Schmidt" -- only less obviously comedic and, as always with Jarmusch, blissfully unresolved.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

Jarmusch's uncharacteristically mainstream -- wonderful -- road trip movie.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Jarmusch manages to imbue banality with surprising beauty and humor.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Take this trip with him and chances are, you'll find the journey increasingly funny and touching.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

If you're shopping for neatly tied bundles of plot and the rigid arcs of "character development" common to mainstream movies, look elsewhere. Whether he's playing on the road or at home, Jarmusch always throws a lot of off-speed stuff, and that's his glory.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Working in his typically idiosyncratic and episodic vein, Jim Jarmusch has nonetheless pitched the film slightly more toward mainstream tastes than usual for him, using excellent thesps in the service of accessible material.

Empire Jo Berry

All the actresses (including Tilda Swinton as ex number four) give wonderful performances in the short screen time each of them is allowed.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Broken Flowers is as elliptical as the haunting jazz music by Mulatu Astatke that permeates the soundtrack.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It forces you to fill in the blanks, then refuses to judge whether you're right or wrong. It's almost like the audience writes its own script, and everybody appreciates his or her own work.

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

A haunting, poetic film, and yet it suffers two major failings. First, Murray provides too blank a slate for the audience to appreciate whatever insights a more expressive performance might have offered. Second, and far more troubling, is the way Jarmusch refuses to take his female characters seriously.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

This is Murray's subtlest performance, and one of his best.

USA Today Mike Clark

Flowers is smartly observational -- but a little screen heat would be worth a bouquet.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A study of middle-class, middle-aged disappointment in its varying forms, a sober look at different life choices.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

In the wasteland of August releases, this entry shines like a beacon lighting the way to a theater.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

For actresses of a certain age, Jarmusch's film amounts to a full-employment act...Best are Stone, transparent in her desire, and Conroy, completely opaque.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

It's hard to fully empathize with Don's season of remorse. It's the big problem with Broken Flowers, and one I don't think the movie -- for all of its funny and occasionally poignant touches -- ever really transcends.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

It skips merrily along the surface with its over-the-top vignettes but never seems to arrive at a destination. Nevertheless, the journey is more than half the fun as every actor attacks his role with relish.

The New Yorker David Denby

Murray’s linking up with Jim Jarmusch is a case of Mr. Cool meeting Mr. Cool, and the result is intriguing and elegant, but not quite satisfying.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jarmusch's narrative setups are often artificial and implausible, but his stories are usually charming anyway because the sense of character runs deeper than plot.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) David Gilmour

It's like watching a man trying to scratch an itch by eating an egg. It doesn't address the problem. It's also the sort of thing that Europeans love to think about America -- everybody looking, nobody finding -- and it might explain why this decent, but by no means great, film won the Grand Prix at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The film ends on an ambiguous note that will infuriate some viewers and strike others as the only possible finale to Don's sad absurdist journey.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Well-meaning but remote picture.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The five episodes in Broken Flowers are good enough to make us expect that the picture has a theme, but it hasn't.

Film Threat Chris Barsanti

Possibly the most European of major American directors, Jim Jarmusch wears his influences on his sleeve and makes no bones about it.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Audiences will laugh, mainly to prove they're awake, but the humor is pretty thin.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 132 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Joel P. gave it a1:
Terrible, boring film. This is not entertainment.

jw gave it a9:
(9.5) Those not familiar with Jarmusch, perhaps anticipating a reprise of life-altering happy sadness in the vein of Lost In Translation, were probably disappointed. They are similar in some important ways, though. Both achieve realism by way of non-resolution, for one. Compare it, on the other hand, to Shopgirl (which I believe tried for the same airspace as Lost In Translation) and I think you'll find that Broken Flowers succeeds in all the ways that movie, I think, failed. Jeffrey Wright - whose characters are typically very busy with everything from redefining postmodern art to diligently defending the interests of big oil companies - seems to have an abundance of time on his hands here. His hyper-interest in Murray's affairs is hilarious, his meddling a direct countercurrent to the rest of the movie's listless forward drift. While the episodic, cameo-driven quality of Dead Man and Coffee and Cigarettes remains intact, there are no (or few) intricate arcs of mysticism swivelling overhead. This makes the movie almost unbelievably real and modern, I think. So does the blatant (considering Jarmusch) use of color, in everything from the mysterious pink letter to the name of the lovely young florist, Sun Green. The soundtrack is typically strong, and stray shots of overgrown typewriters, etc. delight throughout. A meaningful, if quiet, performance by Murray is punctuated by a scene in a graveyard. In a film mad with unanswered questions and dead ends, this scene has beautiful resonance, dignity, and despite itself, explanatory power that entire dialogue-heavy movies of greater ambition failed utterly to achieve.

Nick N gave it a10:
A clever and meaningful film about a middle aged man reflecting on his life and his future. If you think the movie has no end, you're an idiot and you have no idea what they're trying to say. I can see the criticism that it moves slowly, because some people aren't able to engage without constant fireworks.

Clay gave it a6:
It's very slow, and many scenes feel like the cameraman took a lunch break during a shot. However, there are several interesting moments, like the crazy mom and daughter.

Cheryl R. gave it a0:
What a total waste of 2 hours! I am highly unimpressed over wasting my time watching a movie that has no end!!!!

Johan S. gave it a9:
Every human being is an island. No matter what you do. Bill Muray shows this unbearable loneliness in a superb way.

Shawn B. gave it a4:
Meaningful story but f.cked up acting and script.

Broken Flowers Focus Features

Broken Flowers
Focus Features