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My Blueberry Nights

EMAILPRINTThe Weinstein Company

My Blueberry Nights reviews
52
6.4 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 23 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Romance

Written by: Wong Kar Wai
Lawrence Block

Directed by: Wong Kar Wai

Release Date:
Theatrical: April 4, 2008
DVD: July 1, 2008

Running Time: 90 minutes, Color

Origin: Hong Kong / China / France

Summary

RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic material including violence, drinking and smoking

Starring Jude Law, Norah Jones, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and David Strathairn

In Wong Kar Wai's debut English-language feature, the internationally acclaimed director takes his audience on a dramatic journey across the distance between heartbreak and a new beginning. After a rough breakup, Elizabeth sets out on a trip across America, leaving behind a life of memories, a dream, and a soulful new friend, a cafe owner, all to search for something to mend her broken heart. Waitressing her way through the country, Elizabeth befriends others whose yearnings are greater than hers, including a troubled cop, his estranged wife, and a down-on-her luck gambler with a score to settle. Through these individuals, Elizabeth witnesses the true depths of loneliness and emptiness, and begins to understand that her own journey is part of a greater exploration within herself. (Weinstein Company)

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...

83

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Captures the overwhelming and uncontrollable emotional assault of loving and living through captured moments and sensuous images.

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75

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Wildly romantic.

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75

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a stylish and sweet film with moments of affecting brilliance that counterbalance its flaws.

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75

TV Guide Ken Fox

Despite its flaws, the film has the same dreamy, romantic melancholy that distinguishes Wong's best films.

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75

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Wong's visions of a New York café, a Memphis bar, and a Vegas casino--not to mention the swaths of beautiful country in the Southwest--have that enveloping quality that make his films so persistently seductive. The natives should feel flattered.

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67

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Norah Jones, making her big-screen debut as a wistful wanderer, is a beautiful blank, and the fragments barely add up to a movie.

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63

Premiere Glenn Kenny

All this is frustrating, as the picture contains a few grace notes that remind one what an acute filmmaker Wong can be.

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63

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Music and nostalgia are what fuel all this filmmaker's movies, though, even a half-baked translation like this one.

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60

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The director is chasing a mood here -- a mood, an atmosphere and feelings -- much as he did in "In the Mood for Love."

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50

Variety Todd McCarthy

As much a trifle as its title suggests, My Blueberry Nights sees Hong Kong stylist Wong Kar Wai applying his characteristic visual and thematic doodles to a wispy story of lovelorn Yanks.

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50

Village Voice Michelle Orange

The disappointment here doesn't have much to do with Wong doing America--he's been doing America for years, even in Chinese--but with Wong doing Wong, and not up to his own standard.

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50

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

My Blueberry Nights may not quite be what fans of either Jones or Wong Kar-wai -- directing his first film in English -- are expecting. It's a late-night, lovelorn mood piece in a minor key, not complicated or convoluted, finally more confection than substance.

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50

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Isn’t eye candy; it’s a drool-worthy slice of eye pie.

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50

USA Today Claudia Puig

Often ponderous, sometimes pretentious and mostly clichéd, this contrived meditation on longing and loss feels like a missed opportunity.

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50

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

Alternately precious and vapid, the movie attempts to wrest metaphors from a jar of house keys, and eternal verities from pastry. Slice the pie how you will, it's still half-baked.

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50

New York Post V.A. Musetto

The biggest problem is Wong's decision to cast Norah Jones as Elizabeth, a New Yorker who hits the road after a love affair goes bad. Jones, in her first movie, can't act. (There, I said it!)

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50

The New York Times A.O. Scott

After 90 minutes of My Blueberry Nights, which pass pleasantly enough, with swirly, mood-saturated colors; lovely faces; and nice music, you may feel a bit logy yourself -- filled up, sugar-addled, but not really satisfied.

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50

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

A stunner of a movie. But all those gorgeous images never add up to a full picture.

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50

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai has an undeservedly high reputation as a master stylist. He's more like a master window dresser.

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50

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

The use of recognizable movie stars doesn't help, r serve Wong's style. My Blueberry Nights" should have played like a memory, but its hard-living, luckless losers are too beautiful to be believed.

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50

Slate Dana Stevens

There's a curious mismatch between the surface of the movie and what lies beneath it. Wong's technique is layered and detailed like a couture gown, but the story it hangs on is as generic as a seamstress's dress form.

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50

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Even with dyed hair, heavy makeup and a cigarette dangling from her bottom lip, Portman still looks like a schoolgirl pretending to be somebody's mom.

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50

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

There are momentary pleasures, to be sure – a corker of a kiss here, an Otis Redding-backed barroom slink there – but frankly, I'm a little weary of Wong wearing "that same old shaggy dress."

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50

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's beautiful to look at, but there's little there to savor.

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50

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

In these dusty American settings, the wistful melancholy of Wong's earlier movies seems fairly contrived.

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30

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Fractured, tentative, oh-so-artsy and very much in the style of Wong's previous Hong Kong-set boy-meets-girl movies. But this time, the effect is contrived: a star-driven pseudo-indie affair that will please neither celebrity worshipers nor cineastes.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Sebastian B. gave it a5:
Characters were undeveloped, I couldn't feel empathy for anyone. I'm a fan of Norah Jones' music but her acting semed very flat. A forgettable movie.

Max B. gave it a1:
Dull dull dull.

Marcos F. gave it a9:
An inspiring exercise of a road-movie by one of the most talented of the directors alive.

Tina R. gave it a0:
PU! This movie had no real plot. It was boring to say the least.

Jay H. gave it a5:
5.5/10. My Blueberry Nights has all the right ingredients, a skillful director, great cast, good story, but for me it just didn't work and I found my mind wandering and not wanting to stay focused. It lacked character depth.

Diamond S. gave it a5:
This movie was engaging, but the plot failed miserably. The screen writer should have done more with Norah Jones character. It was definatly missing something and Norah Jones was not believable in the role. She had more sexual chemisty with both leading ladies then she did with Jude Law.

Chad S. gave it an8:
In an episode of NBC's "Friends", Joey(Matt LeBlanc) uses a deep lothario-like voice to make the most innocuous phrases sound lascivious; for instance, "grandma's apple pie". In "My Blueberry Nights", this filmmaker transforms the blueberry pie "a la mode" into a sexual metaphor; read: a feminine body part in flux. Now this is an American pie ready for action. The filmmaker depicts female desire through dessert(rivulets of vanilla ice cream streaming down the crust and filling) with lyricism(read: slo-mo), because he wants to maintain an air of mystery about Elizabeth(Norah Jones). Does she come into Jeremy's cafe for friendship, or for love? The pie is a clue. The patina of cream lewdly smeared on Elizabeth's lips that suddenly disappears is another clue. But the filmmaker withholds the particulars about this vanishing smidgeon of vanilla towards the end of "My Blueberry Nights". The kiss belongs to Jeremy(Jude Law), a stand-in for the filmmaker, who records the moment on a surveillance tape(a metaphor for authorship). The kiss is personal. The kiss is performed under the filmic construct of auteurism. This kiss, is no ordinary kiss. This filmmaker, is no ordinary filmmaker.

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