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100The scenes with Stalin and his frightened underlings, his giddy yes-men tip-toeing around him, are written and directed by Duncan with a grace, agility and comic deftness one rarely is treated to at the movies these days.
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100Writer/director Peter Duncan's first film is darkly humorous, with dashes of slapstick, brilliant, and original material.
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83Children bumps into a few dead spots along its irreverent way... But casual sophistication and wiggy Australian self-awareness give this product of unreconstructed bourgeois decadence its idiosyncratic charm.
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80Children of the Revolution won't leave its audiences weak with laughter, but it should have the most perceptive among them arguing in the aisles.
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80A gloss on the disillusion that came with the embracing of communist ideals that is part playful farce, part dark satire, this unclassifiable film, both comic and strange, always holds your attention even when it doesn't seem to know where it's going.
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80This comedy has less to do with narrative than with sheer chutzpah and a first-rate cast. It manages to be irreverently funny despite a subject that is no laughing matter.
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80Brimming with almost too many ideas for its 99-minute running time, Duncan's film boasts a strong cast of top actors who flesh out a group of bizarre yet recognizable characters involved in the political scene from the '50s to the present day.
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80The movie is one of those brilliant and rare blends of paradoxical elements -- both the tragedy and the folly of history, the weight of inheritance, the pressure of the ideal, lots of fairly steamy sex, even a secret agent or two.
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80Equally impressive is Duncan's stylish handling of decor, dialogue, narrative ellipsis, and pacing, all of which call to mind the Hollywood master Ernst Lubitsch.
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75Duncan zips through five decades and dozens of characters without reducing the participants to cliches or slogans. A remarkable cast helps him to keep focused on the core of the piece.
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75That Duncan can't come up with a satisfying ending and lets the story drift into a confusing polemic is hardly surprising. He's guilty of overreaching -- interrupting his very sly satire with quasi-serious thoughts on the end of Soviet communism.
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75Though writer-director Peter Duncan can hardly help but touch on volatile political issues, he seems oddly without a political point of view.
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75Not only is it based on a fairly original premise, but the humor exhibits a distinct edge.
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70A true killing comedy would require a great deal more sophistication than first-time writer-director Peter Duncan brings to the party. He hasn't made a black comedy, really; it's more like a black spoof.
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Using a cockeyed, surreal style harking back to Monty Python-ism, writer- director Peter Duncan illuminates the tragedy of all true believers whose faith depends upon keeping ears and eyes firmly shut.
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67This debut feature from Australian director Duncan is still a wonderful sociopolitical experiment, dripping with sarcasm and bizarre, oddball humor, which make it all the more potent.
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63Uneven but also unflaggingly lively, the movie presents F. Murray Abraham as a corseted and bewigged Stalin in expository bits whose broadness recalls the Billy Wilder-scripted Soviet satires ("Ninotchka" and "One, Two, Three") without being as funny. [16 May 1997, Pg.02.D]
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50It is enormously ambitious -- maybe too much so, since it ranges so widely between styles and strategies that it distracts from its own flow.
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