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88As much fun as anything director/co-writer Jane Campion has ever filmed. Holy Smoke lets it all hang out.
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88Sexy, snotty, vulnerable and above all contentious, she's (Winslet) the catalyst in a movie that creates more man-woman electricity than any other movie this year.
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83It's a funny, insightful film whose feminist undertones don't overwhelm the story and characters.
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80What transpires is so rich that I've seen this movie three times. The joy of being involved with two wholly truthful (if colorfully fucked up) characters is that exhilarating.
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80At once hilarious and serious, cruel and tender, and bristling with vitality, Holy Smoke is the right movie for the millennium, envisioning new possibilities in the way people view and relate to one another.
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75Winslet and Keitel are brilliant as cult member & deprogrammer.
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75If this is an example of Australian live-and-let- live, it is very likable.
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75By its hilarious, grotesquely over-the-top climax, Holy Smoke is ideologically, metaphorically out of control, as if it has risen from the '70s ashes.
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75A quirky and satisfying love story.
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75Too tightly made not to keep you watching, Holy Smoke is also too hokey and didactic to take seriously.
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70Filled with flashy sight gags, overwrought performances, and madly overlapping dialogue.
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70I'm not even sure the movie makes sense at times, yet Campion's offbeat rhythms and eye for startling images always made me happy to be looking at the screen.
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63A smaller picture like this, shot out of the mainstream, has a better chance of being quirky and original. And quirky it is, even if not successful.
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63In a movie packed with broad humor, the best jokes are so small they're easy to overlook.
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63Either Campion is the most inspirational director of performers or Winslet the most carnal.
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63In the end, Holy Smoke crashes and burns.
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60It's not a movie you could call dispassionate, however aimless and unfocused. It's a Molotov cocktail tossed in several directions at once.
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60Winslet and Keitel are perfectly matched, go-for-broke actors handed dramatic license to do a psychic striptease.
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60Kate Winslet is a mesmerizing force in her own right, but too much of Holy Smoke turns out to be hot air.
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As Holy Smoke moves from its early mix of rapture and humor into this more serious, confrontational stage, it runs into trouble.
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58It's an often lovely, constantly assured film that now and again burps forth a really remarkable vision. But it's also half-nuts -- maybe three-quarters.
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50Campion is an imaginative filmmaker, but here she reduces a fascinating subject to a two-character soap opera that often seems contrived on both spiritual and psychological levels.
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50Wrestles with big questions, gets the upper hand during the first hour, then loses its grip. By the end, it's flat on its back on the mat.
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50Original in every sense.
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50This is mainly smoke, not fire.
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40If Campion has a message in all this -- something about the eternal battle of the sexes -- it is far from clear.
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38It lurches ineptly from lame comedy to hokey melodrama.
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30Just not enough for me.
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20A forgivable error, but an error nonetheless.
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20There's so much wrong with this movie.
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Positive: 3 out of 4
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Mixed: 0 out of 4
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Negative: 1 out of 4
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