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Great New Wonderful, The
First Independent Pictures


6.0

based on 14 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 3 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for language and some sexuality

Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Edie Falco, Tony Shalhoub, Jim Gaffigan, Olympia Dukakis, Judy Greer, Thomas McCarthy, and Naseeruddin Shah

The Great New Wonderful is populated by people you know: New Yorkers you see on the elevator, in the supermarket, at the gym. Without a trace of sentimentality, director Danny Leiner, a Brooklyn native, and his extraordinary cast paints five portraits of life in this city a year after the attacks of 9/11. (First Independent Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Sam Catlin
DIRECTED BY:	Danny Leiner
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 12, 2006 Theatrical: June 23, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	87 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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 Daily News Jack Mathews

The stories are eye-opening and heartwarming at the same time, but you'll be moved less by empathy for the characters than by the summoning of your own emotional memories. This movie is personal.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A quieter, less melodramatic piece of work than last year's "Crash," and arguably a better one.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Writer Sam Catlin and director Danny Leiner have fashioned an alert, shrewdly observed portrait of a moment in time.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Overall, there's a patchwork quality to the movie, as if a batch of half-finished short stories were filmed before their time.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Working from a stagy script by Sam Catlin, director Danny Leiner uses a dainty palette of tristesse (untouched when he made Dude, Where's My Car?) to suggest that the shadow of 9/11 makes every discontent more pathetic.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The result is a mixed bag of lozenges, some sweet, some tart and others that just melt away into nothing.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The story lines don't intersect in that schematic, "Crash"-y way, which is refreshing. Less refreshing is the neat-and-tidiness of the individual exchanges in Sam Catlin's script.

Los Angeles Times Gene Seymour

The movie falls short of the grandeur it's reaching for, but if you're looking for balm to soothe your frazzled nerves, you may be able to scrape some from the movie's rawer edges.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The new 9/11 movies aim to rekindle feelings that most of us have, by necessity, moved beyond. But there’s more than one way to move beyond, as suggested by the spottily affecting ensemble psycho-comedy The Great New Wonderful.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

It is hard to feel much warmth toward people whose most salient feature is their disconnection from reality.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Unfortunately, screenwriter Sam Catlin and director Danny Leiner make the unexpected mistake of being too subtle.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Tries way too hard to be clever and shrewd.

New York Post Kyle Smith

In the future, more and more filmmakers will do exactly what The Great New Wonderful has done: conceal their lack of ideas by bringing up 9/11.

Village Voice Ben Kenigsberg

Ironically, Leiner's two monuments to pothead delirium seem vastly more coherent than this hazy attempt to mine the zeitgeist, a film every bit as pointed as its nounless title.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Read N. gave it a9:
I enjoyed the dark humor and the challenging characters. The young couple experiencing relief after their son is gone - not an easy idea to express.

Bob C gave it a2:
The last line of dialogue in the film is "I think I'm lost". The line sums up the film for me. After 87 minutes of wathcing the barely interesting lives of several New Yorkers on the first anniversary of 9/11, I felt lost too. I still don't know where the journey through this film was meant to lead. It felt empty and unsatisfying.

Ken G. gave it a7:
The connection with 9/11 doesn't really work (and comes of as somewhat pretentious), because it involves an assumption that we were all happily walking around as well-adjusted, and issue-free people prior to 9/11, but never-the-less, this is full of wee-written, and well played character, creating a poignant feel.

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Great New Wonderful, The First Independent Pictures

Great New Wonderful, The
First Independent Pictures