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100Dying is not this cheerful, but we need to think it is. The Barbarian Invasions is a movie about a man who dies about as pleasantly as it's possible to imagine; the audience sheds happy tears.
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100A brilliant entertainment, full of bemused skepticism and reckless, prodigal love -- for these people and their vanishing era and lives.
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90Arcand's fondness for the good old 60s can be cloying, but despite an uneven cast, he finds a tonal balance between sentimental and cynical that keeps the conversations real and heart wrenching.
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88It's a feast of smart, sexy, glorious talk. The Oscar for best foreign film belongs right here.
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88Where Denys Arcand's delightful 1986 comedy "The Decline of the American Empire" celebrated the good life, his profoundly funny sequel The Barbarian Invasions heartily toasts the good death.
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88Although the specter of death hovers over the entire film, it is neither a grim nor a depressing experience. Arcand has injected a great deal of wit into the movie, and it meshes perfectly with the anticipated pathos.
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83The combination of ideas and wit, lively characterizations, believable human dilemmas and a climax that both melts and braces you makes for a fine blend. A movie about ideas may sound like a drag, but this one packages them in well-earned emotions.
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80A reunion movie, and while it's often very funny, it has none of the self-satisfied piety or strenuous jokiness of "The Big Chill." Its mood shifts between defiant exuberance and wistful contemplation, but it's never mawkish.
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80Bristling but finally surprisingly moving film.
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80The rapprochement between Rémy and Sébastien is beautiful to watch, and all of the characters in The Barbarian Invasions are played with a lusty warmth that makes them lovable even when they are being tiresome.
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80A pungently funny and heartfelt piece of wish fulfillment.
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80A full-bodied, funny and gloriously unpretentious ode to family, friendship and the meaning of life, The Barbarian Invasions is solidly entertaining, sharply written and genuinely touching.
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80The film grows on you too, a later-stage version of "The Big Chill" that starts schematically and ends as a stirring celebration.
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80Admirable in its refusal to be politically correct.
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80A movie that, in the story of one man dying, shows us all how to live.
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80The Barbarian Invasions might be called an idyll of death. Without excessive sentiment (but without slighting sentiment, either). [24 November 2003, p. 113]
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78Sharp-witted delight.
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75A deeply felt celebration of the life force, as embodied in Girard's fierce performance as a man who may not have done all he could, but had an enviably great time on the way.
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75The treatment of the subject isn't maudlin, thanks to a witty script and an enormously likable lead character, Remy (Remy Girard), who remains bullheaded and lusty to the finish.
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75Despite a slight tendency to be overly pleased with itself, this is a smart piece of work that got Arcand's screenplay an award at Cannes.
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75A honey, but your response to it may depend on where you fall on life's big curve.
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75As a film about intellectuals, The Barbarian Invasions can sometimes seem maddeningly scattered and contradictory.
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70The Barbarian Invasions' flaws are mainly glaring because the movie is occasionally so winning.
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70Arcand loyalists are bound to miss Rémy, but at least he goes out in style. Even the antagonists will have to admit that.
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67I kept wondering how Arcand could have chosen as his generational representative a man not just flawed in his hedonism but one so fundamentally lacking in tenderness for others.
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67Like a family visit during the holidays. Tensions run high, not everyone is likable but being there's an uneasy comfort because everything is so familiar.
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63Girard gives feisty life to the battle-weary professor, but Rousseau just follows the drill--he is glass-eyed to the point of distraction. And for all its intellectual maneuvering, the film never regains the simple power of its opening salvo.
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60If the banter lacks the often brilliant and erudite -- if showy -- sparkle of its predecessor, the acting is still first-rate, and the film will be best enjoyed by fans eager to spend another 90 minutes with a group of old friends.
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60The structure similarly misses the flashbacking subtlety of the original. Even the characterisation lacks depth.
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50A bit too neat and calculated to make the emotions ring really true.
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40Which would all be well and good, if only Arcand's approach weren't so deliberate and stupefyingly superior.
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40Arcand has a gift for witty dialogue but a weakness for force-feeding his story with sentiment. References to ancient holocausts and to 9/11 simply expose the intent of a director who will do anything to touch his audience -- with a sweet gesture or a cattle prod. And in a comedy of manners, that behavior is very impolite.
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38Schmaltzy and contrived.
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20Shear away the film's pretensions, and it's a soap opera of assholes.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 17 out of 20
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Mixed: 2 out of 20
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Negative: 1 out of 20
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PatC.7Intelligent and relevant without being inspiring, being somewhat diluted by itself.
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BobM.9A beautiful film; very unhollywood; thoughful; and thank God, not something the Villlage Voice liked.