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100By the end of the movie, we have been through an emotional and a sensual wringer, in a film of great wisdom and delight.
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Big Night's beauty is the fact that it is about passion.
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100It is one of the most beautifully staged American movies in a very long time.
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100The real feast is in the mix of characters, each so finely and unschmaltzily delineated in a script so confident and controlled that even the most passing of participants comes alive.
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89Big Night is, in a word, delicious.
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88May not have the size and grandeur of some of the biographical and political epics being released this fall, but I defy you to find a better written, more honest -- or yes, more satisfying and delicious -- movie this year. [27 September 1996, Friday, p.C]
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88A robustly imaginative sleeper
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88In addition to their deft skill with light drama, the directors understand well-placed humor, and throw just the right amount of comedy into the mix to make Big Night fun without turning it into an outright farce.
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80It's so good, so jam-packed with delights, that it leaves you gorged -- and bemoaning the fatty glop that passes for moviemaking these days.
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80As delicately and deliciously prepared as the dishes it features, Big Night is a lyric to the love of food, family and persuasive acting.
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80The film is loaded with brotherly affection and with warm, funny and poignant evocations of a gentler time.[20 September 1996, p.C12]
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80A movie that is both as real as food on the table and as hauntingly evanescent as its taste on one's tongue.
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80This unlikely collaboration between actors Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott is extremely well directed, making for a smartly made, delightfully acted period piece whose sensibility neatly straddles art films and the mainstream.
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80It's the moviegoing equivalent of great eating.
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This little picture charms by virtue of its craft and patience.
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75Both a delightful story and a great food movie that ranks with "Like Water for Chocolate'' or "Babette's Feast.''
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70A feast of a film done on a low budget with a menu featuring top-grade acting, writing and direction.
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70Like Primo's dishes, Big Night looks and tastes (yes, it does taste) like a labor of love.
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70There's an almost natty precision about this picture that's so rare these days in American movies that it provides satisfaction in itself.
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70Big Night, a scrumptious tale of great food and grand passions, belongs on the menu with such mouth-watering movie fare as "Babette's Feast" and "Like Water for Chocolate."
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One of the few American independent films right now that actually deserves its high praise.
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60The script is shapeless and it all goes on far too long.
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50The story, ultimately, is about the classic conflict between a desire to cherish and protect one's unique gifts from a brutal world and a more practical instinct to compromise beauty.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 9
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Mixed: 0 out of 9
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Negative: 1 out of 9
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DavidO.10One of the finest "little movies" of the last 30 years. An absolute gem full of spot-on acting and wonderful writing.
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TravisR.10It is perfect.