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.
Italian for Beginners

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 28 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by: Lone Scherfig
Directed by: Lone Scherfig
Release Date:
Theatrical: January 18, 2002
DVD: October 15, 2002
Running Time: 112 minutes, Color
Origin: Denmark
Language(s): Danish and Italian (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: R for language and some sexuality
Starring Anders W. Berthelsen, Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, Anette Støvelbæk, Peter Gantzler, Lars Kaalund, Sara Indrio Jensen, Elsebeth Steentoft, and Rikke Wölck
Follows the stories of six insecure singles whose lives interweave one dreary Copenhagen winter. (Miramax Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Danish 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...
San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer
Lone Scherfig, the writer-director, has made a film so unabashedly hopeful that it actually makes the heart soar. Yes, soar.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Scherfig and her wonderful cast slyly transmute the quotidian into the magical. Its like watching flowers bloom in a concrete garden.
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
This is a woman's work in the best sense -- empathetic, inferentially erotic and delicately intuitive, as well as fiercely intelligent.
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
A delicious and delicately funny look at the residents of a Copenhagen neighborhood coping with the befuddling complications life tosses at them.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
The sober wit of this comedy arises not from conventional artifice -- snappy dialogue, wacky situations -- but from a realistically drawn ensemble interacting truthfully with one another.
Boston Globe Jay Carr
It's the kind of romantic comedy that doesn't cheapen the word ''heartwarming.''
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Italian for Beginners, on its own small scale, is a one-of-a-kind movie: a baggy-pants spiritual comedy.
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
This is a movie that doesn't depend for its effects on star performers or stylized wish-fulfillment sexuality but on realism, sharp observation and honest humor.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
It's the rare film, Dogma or otherwise, that keeps you smiling long after the lights come up.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Don Irvine
Unlike Hollywood's starting point of hopelessly beautiful and yet inexplicably unentangled principal characters, Italian For Beginners'raw material is something of a more dirty-fingernail variety.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
It's all done without special effects, soaring strings or manufactured sentiment. Now, that's entertainment.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
These melancholy Danes create something sweetly sexy, funny and touching.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
As they stumble, bumble and fumble their way to love, they get more charming by the minute. Which makes them more interesting than Hollywood-style characters, anyway.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
With its ludicrous parallels and brisk, funny script (pardon my provincialism, but it sounds all the funnier in Danish), Italian for Beginners is full of larky charm while drawing its emotional vitality from urban loneliness.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
A funny, relationship-driven ensemble piece that takes the chill out of the Danish winter with a snuggly blanket of humanism.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Has a generosity of spirit and a wonderfully upbeat ending that makes it a nice little antidote to a bleak season.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The film only wants to amuse. It's a reminder that Dogma films need not involve pathetic characters tormented by the misuse of their genitalia, but can simply want to have a little fun.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
An engaging romantic comedy that would have been better if the audience wasn't constantly being distracted by mediocre video quality and jerky camera movements.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
This charming but slight tale has warmth, wit and interesting characters compassionately portrayed.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Dogme films don't have to be bleak to be effective. They can be -- imagine! -- fun. Scherfig may have taken the discipline in an entirely new and welcome direction.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Its low-key charm shows that Dogma filmmakers have yet to run out of ideas.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Sweet-natured and likable to a fault, the film studiously avoids confronting the darker themes of death and religion that bubble up from its story, no matter how central they are to the characters' lives.
Read Full Review >Variety Eddie Cockrell
The most nonconfrontational and thus accessible title in the Dogma lot to date, and will speak the international language of proletariat love to arthouse auds who go for such fare.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Will be of interest for anyone seeking unconventional romantic stories as well as those curious about the development of the Dogme movement.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Despite its hip, off-center style and pointed de-glamorization of its singles, the movie adds up to little more than feel-good fluff.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
To see this much austere vérité atmosphere propping up this much schlock romanticism is like biting into a blue-cheese canapé that turns out to be a fluffernutter.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
While the film shuns the glamour or glitz that an American movie might demand, Scherfig tosses us a romantic scenario that is just as simplistic as a Hollywood production.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Steve Simels
None of this is any more fun as it sounds -- the cancer ward scenes are truly disturbing -- but to be fair, writer/director Lone Scherfeg (the first woman to make a Dogme 95 film) manages some black-humored laughs.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 9.8 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Drew J. gave it a 10:
Magical experience, you can not come out unaffected.
Mike G. gave it a 10:
Media reviewers seem to have missed the fact that it takes place during Advent, and is about the effect of a man of faith.
Richard P. gave it a 10:
One of the best movies I have ever seen.
Dana F. gave it a 10:
Such a delight that in the midst of falling in love with it and its characters, I wept unabashadley while grinning like a fool.
Ron G. gave it a 10:
Lone Scherfig makes you smile, laugh, cry and feel good after you watch this exquisite film.
Chad S. gave it a 10:
Dogma for beginners is more like it. Films shot on digital video are not known for its warmth and can sometimes be a test of viewer endurance. "Italian for Beginners" shocks you with its gentle humor and tenderness. That's not to say there isn't the requisite existential angst either, though. There's gobs. But this film is not unrelenting in its grimness like "The Celebration" or "Dancer in the Dark" were. Seeing these characters at Venice on vacation, and the physical Venice itself, through the digital video format make these Danes really look like tourists, and Venice, a tourist destination. There is a moment here, involving the Italian girl in love with an older man, that belongs in the canon of great romantic comedy moments. You may clap. It is so winning like so much of this amazing movie.
