Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Dear Wendy
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 25 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 16 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: Lars von Trier
Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 23, 2005
DVD: March 21, 2006
Running Time: 101 minutes, Color
Origin: Denmark / France / Germany / UK
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Michael Angarano, Danso Gordon, Novella Nelson, Chris Owen, Alison Pill, and Mark Webber
Focusing on a group of young people in a poverty-stricken coal mining town somewhere in the American south-east, Dear Wendy is an audacious and stylish exploration of guns and violence in America. (Wellspring Media)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: It's All About Love
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
New York Post V.A. Musetto
A satirical blast at America's gun culture. But it's so entertaining that even a die-hard NRA member might be impressed.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
By the time this astute and entirely distinctive film is over, the folly of America's love affair with guns, past and present, is laid bare with the same inescapable force with which Gregg Araki exposed the horror of child molestation in "Mysterious Skin," a similarly poetic and deceptively affectless film.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Lars Von Trier's silly script about a group of pistol packing misfits gets better treatment than it deserves, thanks to a fine young cast and the game direction of Thomas Vinterberg.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter James Greenberg
Part parable, part wild west shoot-out, yet totally original, Dear Wendy is a powerful indictment of American gun culture.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
When you have to ask yourself whether this parable is intended as comedic satire or stone-cold-serious moralizing, that's a big sign that you're watching a misfire.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Surreal, vaguely amusing, European-made drama.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Michael Posner
One part satire, two parts allegory, and several parts dreary sermon on the pernicious effects of America's gun culture.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Von Trier has a tendency to go overboard in his denunciations of American violence (Dogville). By contrast, Dear Wendy is a cogent, comprehensive take on the land and the films that obsess him.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Jeremy Mathews
The film is challenging and consistently interesting, but also trite and overbearing to the extent that it damages its message.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Starts out as an inspired test case for the continued necessity of the Second Amendment, and only near the end does it lose some of its tightly concentrated focus.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
It may sound like a Peter Pan spinoff, and Dear Wendy does involve lost boys in a stagey setting, but the film is closer to "A Clockwork Orange" than a tale of lasting youth.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Dear Wendy is absurd to the point of comic parody. Bloody as it is, it has no access to viewers' emotions, and its message - play with fire and you get burned - is too obvious to be provocative.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Taking wobbly aim at our country's complicated love affair with guns, the movie's the very definition of a cheap shot.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Its mad rush to offer shallow takes on every Big American Issue would be offensive if it weren't so misguided. It's almost cute the way Dear Wendy thinks it knows what it's talking about and then just keeps going and going long after it's stopped making sense.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
A tedious exercise in style, intended as a meditation on guns and violence in America but more of a meditation on itself, the kind of meditation that invites the mind to stray.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jessica Winter
Especially in the climactic, clumsily staged gunfight, the prevailing mode is wide-eyed idiocy--which might be the point, since von Trier's satirical target is the hypocrisy of (news flash!) America's eagerness to enforce stability and security with all guns blazing.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
It's not merely that Dear Wendy was shot on Danish and German locations that don't look quite right; it's that almost every decision made by the production designers is wrong, or at least discordant.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The protracted shoot-out at the end of Dear Wendy is even more pornographic than the moment when a female member of the Dandies exposes her breasts. The audience is clearly expected to enjoy the bloodbath even while it disapproves.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It's a long slog, not because what the film says is provocative but because the technique is as slack as the writing.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The movie's smugness is insufferable.
Dallas Observer Staff (Not credited)
Is there anything more tedious than the guy who complains and complains about something he knows nothing about? Danish cinema auteur Lars von Trier has never been to the United States because he's afraid of flying, yet he seems determined to keep making movies about how horrible this country is.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
The story is laughably incoherent, which would be less bothersome if the movie were not also so unremittingly pretentious.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 16 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Andy W. gave it a9:
Although I often look to the critics for their opinion of a film in this case they are seriously incorrect in their evaluation of Dear Wendy. This is a brilliant satire written by Lars Von Trier who examines how idealism can go wrong. Vinterberg again demonstrates his under-used directing ability and crafts a film that matches the quality of The Celebration. Make your own decision and see this movie.
Lisa A. gave it a9:
I have to strongly disagree with many of the film critics - I saw this film at the Toronto Film Fest and thought it was absolutely great! Please ignore the critics and see it.
Kim W. gave it a2:
As a Dane I'm ashamed of and embarrassed about Van Trier's latest films. His critic of a country he's never even visited is to me unfathomable. I believe there's a word for it - ignorance.
Pekka P. gave it a3:
Horrible. What's wrong with Trier these days. Sad, sad.
matthew l. gave it a9:
This movie is very interesting. The imaginative world that these guys create is just as real as the imaginary world that NRA types create for themselves, but much funner. The end invalidates any negative feelings toward the rest of the film.
Len gave it a9:
This film creates its own compelling world, where inital goofy comedy hurtles toward a tragedy that seems both futile and inevitable. Stylized and thought-provoking, obvious and oblique. See it and decide for yourself.
