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80Nicole Kidman -- continuing the string of remarkable performances that have followed "Eyes Wide Shut" -- finds plenty of fodder in the long-delayed Birthday Girl. A grimy thriller with a wicked streak of humor.
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80It may not be particularly innovative, but the film's crisp, unaffected style and air of gentle longing make it unexpectedly rewarding.
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80Charmingly setting aside glamour for a turn at pure acting, Nicole Kidman zings up the already zingy script of Birthday Girl.
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75It's a slight, old-fashioned B movie, the last thing you would expect from an actress coming off a breakout year, but it has a charm and freshness we don't see much these days.
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75Black comedies are rare enough. Birthday Girl is a member of an even rarer species, the black romantic comedy.
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75The actress may get an Oscar nomination for the wrong movie -- "Moulin Rouge" over "The Others" -- but it would be a double misfortune for audiences to overlook a performance that boosts its movie from moderate to memorable.
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75Rare is the movie that arrives without fanfare -- that sneaks between the cracks, pops up relatively unheralded on the big screen, and takes the viewer by delighted surprise. Well, check the moon for blue because Birthday Girl is just such a picture.
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70Keep your eye on Kidman, whose kinky, kittenish performance turns unexpected emotional corners that pull you up short.
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70Butterworth guides us through the world of chaos and romantic confusion he's created as if it's the most natural place in the world. After a while, we actually believe it is.
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67Still, it's worth checking out if only to see Kidman immolate everything else on screen through sheer sexy charisma. Tom who?
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If British writer-director Jez Butterworth had let his sophomore picture get as dirty as Kidman's game recklessness invited -- she started this before ''Moulin Rouge'' and ''The Others'' -- he would have served up a tasty piece of cake.
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67The good news is that Kidman's the best thing in this rather subdued film: sexy, coy and even a bit funny. The bad news is that the movie itself is unlikely to register very long on anyone's radar.
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63A paper-thin wish-fulfillment comedy about escaping small-town repressions and blasting conformity.
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63Won't make you forget Kidman's better work, but it's not a film you long to excise from your memory.
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63This bizarre, uneven comedy is notable mostly for the unsettling presence of Nicole Kidman in full, kinky, sex-kitten mode.
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63The romantic comedy doesn't have much, but it has Kidman.
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63The movie runs out of steam before its finish, but she (Kidman) doesn't.
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60Kidman accomplishes a remarkable feat of transformation, adopting not only an accent, but a slightly seedy, faintly feral demeanor that almost makes you forget her icy good looks and fashion model's figure.
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60Starts out as a first-rate chick movie and winds up a second-rate guy movie. But if this somehow proves to be a formula for the perfect date movie, then Kidman is even more brilliant than we thought.
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50There is a curious problem with Birthday Girl, hard to put your finger on: The movie is kind of sour. It wants to be funny and a little nasty, it wants to surprise us and then console us, but what it mostly does is make us restless.
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50Ultimately, Birthday Girl disintegrates into a fairly routine -- and brutal -- caper movie.
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50Quickly devolves into a violent thriller that resolves itself in sadomasochistic romance.
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50See it to be reminded (if you need further reminding) of this actress' remarkable range. Otherwise, take a pass.
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40It's that sense of ardor that's missing from Ben Chaplin's performance in Birthday Girl.
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40This breathless demi-noir has so much bounce that we barely get any time to mull over the gaping holes in its moth-eaten plot. It is competent but extremely slight.
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40There's nothing wrong with beguiling star turns, but I wish this one had been surrounded by more of a movie. Birthday Girl is a harmless trifle that makes 93 minutes go by as if they were hardly more than an hour and a half.
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40Uneven, not particularly inspired comic thriller.
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30The film's Russians are all played by French and Australian actors. Too bad Butterworth didn't find a Russian to play the Brit. That would have made the inauthenticity complete.
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30Kidman, who speaks Russian for much of the movie, turns in a technically impeccable performance, but the movie gets far more out of her than she out of it.
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30Between bad hair and tonal irregularity, the movie doesn't give you much to like.
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20The most subtly revolting aspect of the movie is how it manages to exploit violence for cheap thrills, in part by equating submission with love.
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10It's just that this clunky, inane vehicle sputters barely a few feet down its quaint English highway before you want to bid it "do zvidániya, dumb-ass!"
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Positive: 2 out of 2
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Mixed: 0 out of 2
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Negative: 0 out of 2
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