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100Extraordinary.
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100The wonder of the film is how good it makes us feel. Greenberg scintillates with intelligence, razor's-edge humor and austere empathy for its struggling lovers.
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91Bittersweet and beautifully realized, harsh but humane, Greenberg is a self-consciously small film that nevertheless leaves an indelible mark.
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90Greenberg is on every level the work of a more mature filmmaker, and quite possibly a happier man.
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90It is the funniest and saddest movie Mr. Baumbach has made so far, and also the riskiest.
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88I have a weakness for actresses like Greta Gerwig. She looks reasonable and approachable.
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88Greenberg, with Stiller's sad and self-mocking portrait at its core, is well worth getting to know.
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88Powerfully honest, insightful and poignant.
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83Baumbach's movies are addictive dispatches from a genteel jungle of white privilege, where highly educated people behave badly. I can't take my eyes off the exotic wildlife.
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80Like a lot of human relationships Greenberg is complicated, infuriating, good-hearted, funny, often painful, and well worth the effort. A sad little movie but also a great one, lit by two astonishing central performances.
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80When Stiller indulges in moments of unfulfilled rage, this has real desperation.
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80Greenberg is a movie of throwaway one-liners and evocatively nondescript locations. The style is observational, the drama is understated, and, when the time comes, it knocks you out with the subtlest of badda-booms.
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80This is tricky, ambiguous material, seemingly better fitted to a short literary novel than to a movie, and it could have gone wrong in a hundred ways, yet Baumbach handles it with great assurance.
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78Going dramatic, Stiller commits to the role completely; there's something rather admirable in his refusal to pander or soft-pedal the self-serious, frankly unlikable Greenberg.
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75See this darkly comic character study unburdened by preconceptions.
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75Greenberg is a comedy (a scene in which Roger attends a boisterous college party and pitches a fit over the music is marvelously funny), but it's a sad, rueful comedy about disappointment.
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75Jennifer Jason Leigh (Baumbach's wife) appears in two scenes, as an ex-girlfriend of Greenberg, and she's quietly brilliant, as always.
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75A delicate, if slightly smoggy, feeling of regret hangs over Greenberg, a quietly funny portrait of grown-ups growing up.
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75Noah Baumbach makes nature documentaries disguised as indie comedy-dramas.
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75What saves it, however, is Gerwig. The love story ain't credible, but her performance is, perfectly capturing a young woman who doesn't lack confidence so much as a sense of self.
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75Baumbach overreaches, making this character a selfish, off-putting cultural (LA) and generational scold. But Stiller, in his most "real" performance in ages, finds the function in this catalog of dysfunctions, the humanity in this humanity-hating crank.
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75Like "The Squid and the Whale," this character study pushes the definition of comedy to the breaking point, and unlike the far less successful "Margot at the Wedding," it leaves us faintly smiling after the workout.
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75Mr. Baumbach has a knack for capturing real-life dialogue--particularly and hilariously how people tend not to listen to the person on the other side of the conversation.
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75Why would you watch a film about a creep like Greenberg? Well, aside from the fact that it's well-done and intense and occasionally funny (in a dark, dark way, mind you), there's the sneaking suspicion that there's a little of this fellow in all of us, and self-knowledge of that sort is a gift that, often, only art can give.
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Even if you sympathize with his troubles, it's hard to actually like the guy. At best, he's uncomfortable to be around; at worst, he's irritating and even reprehensible.
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70While winning no points for originality, Baumbach and his co-conspirator in the script, Jennifer Jason Leigh -- have created an all-too-convincing portrait of a 40-year-old man in emotional freefall.
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70The movie may wear its shagginess on its sleeve, but Stiller knows exactly what he's doing.
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70There's no hard-and-fast rule that says you have to like the main character in a movie. It's more a custom, really - a custom that Ben Stiller stretches nearly to the breaking point in Greenberg.
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70An unsettling but ultimately joyous little picture, a movie that's as self-conscious as anything Baumbach has ever made, and yet far more open: It reaches out to the world instead of insisting on hugging its own pain, tight.
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70Greenberg would be a heckuva movie if we could just get Greenberg out of there.
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70That Greenberg has merits is undeniable. Gerwig, a funny mix of Kate Winslet and the joyfully ditzy young Diane Keaton, should end up a star. Stiller dials back his own schtick and deserves to be taken seriously.
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70As a study of stasis and of people conscious of not living the lives they had imagined for themselves, the picture offers a bracing undertow of seriousness beneath the deceptively casual, dramatically offhand surface.
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67Nothing much happens in Greenberg, yet Stiller and co-star Greta Gerwig make inconsequence tolerable with solid performances.
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63To really pull off Greenberg would require a lead performance from a master actor. The actor it stars is . . . Ben Stiller.
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63There's humor there, but this is a "smart" comedy, which is to say it's not intended to make you guffaw.
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Although Ben Stiller's brand of nervy comic ticks can prove irritating on occasions, here he is kept in check so that the humor and the pathos shine through.
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50Any comic relief it affords comes with such an undertow of repressed emotions and displaced anger that it all starts to feel more depressing than dramatic.
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50Putting them together was a bold casting move, but as good as they both are in their roles--she (Gerwig) in the flustered, galumphing mode of early Teri Garr, he (Stiller) in the clenched and mumbling one of late Woody Allen--they never quite seem to be sharing the same movie.
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50Stiller plays a monster, and when Gerwig goes for him, declaring that she sees his tender side, the development seems like a fond indulgence on the part of writer-director Noah Baumbach.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 20 out of 47
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Mixed: 5 out of 47
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Negative: 22 out of 47
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