A Very Long Engagement
Metascore
76 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 39 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 31 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 39
  3. Negative: 0 out of 39
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    100
    It's a magical film which manages to transport and rivet us in the same highly-imaginitive, breezily playful way "Amelie" did.
  2. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Ruthe Stein
    100
    Hauntingly tells a story older than the Odyssey and as timely as today's body count from Iraq.
  3. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    100
    Unfolds amid the mechanized carnage of World War I. Yet everything in it is personal. That's why it's a masterpiece.
  4. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    100
    Rapturously beautiful, startlingly audacious and often very funny, the film employs many of the techniques that were used so pleasingly in "Amélie."
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  5. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    91
    This is a movie that considers graphic violence with a refined taste for the sensuous: Guts spill, blood spurts, corpses stink, but there is a handsome, absurdist humanity to the way Jeunet (who wrote the script with Guillaume Laurant) maps out the crossroads of human carnage and human caring.
  6. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    91
    A unique and masterful film, filled with surprises and felicities and moments of transporting visual power.
  7. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Michael Ferraro
    90
    The film is near perfect in its attempt to properly mix the irrationality of war in with an interesting love story.
  8. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Charles Taylor
    90
    The holiday season's best movie so far.
  9. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Ken Tucker
    90
    When this long movie is over, all you want to do is clap and weep and watch it all over again immediately.
  10. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    90
    Can a movie have too much good stuff? Not when it's stuffed like this one.
  11. Variety
    Reviewed by: Lisa Nesselson
    90
    Told with a blend of visual mastery and emotional intimacy, ambitious venture sustains a special melding of romance and pragmatism that should engage discerning audiences.
  12. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    90
    In its insistence on the centrality of the war to the collective consciousness of mankind, it's of a piece with "The English Patient," rather than "Saving Private Ryan."
  13. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    88
    An emotional powerhouse.
  14. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    Jeunet brings everything together -- his joyously poetic style, the lovable Tautou, a good story worth the telling -- into a film that is a series of pleasures stumbling over one another in their haste to delight us.
  15. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    88
    A long movie that almost wears out its 21/4-hour welcome, yet it's full of surprises.
  16. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    88
    Flattens you with concussive detail and the awfulness of war; it plays like "Saving Private Ryan" as remade by a Continental mathematician flipping out on Ecstasy.
  17. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Glenn Kenny
    88
    An epic treatment of epic themes that doesn't soft-soap its audience, but at the same time provides a terrifically satisfying entertainment.

User Reviews

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User Score
8.0 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 54 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 27
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 27
  3. Negative: 1 out of 27
  1. ryancarroll88
    6
    The complement of Jeunet's visual style with Tautou's quirky acting will pretty much always give an enchanting product, but in "A Very Long Engagement," the story itself is much too clunky and aloof to stay focused on.… Full Review »
  2. BertiP.
    10
    A compelling film, wonderfully created, showing French cinema at its very best. It seems that some of the "American rewiews" have not understood this productions depth and style.… Full Review »
  3. TonyB.
    6
    This is probably as effective an anti-war film as any since "Paths of Glory." However, it would have been an even better work of cinematic art if it had been shorter. Some scenes are repetitive and should have been eliminated; others would have been more effective if they were shorter.… Full Review »
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