"The Saddest Music in the World" just might be the most quotable comedy since "This is Spinal Tap". You won't get any spoilers from me. See this film and enjoy them firsthand. Director Guy Maddin is a visual genius, but then again, maybe he just seems so because there's nobody else replicating the thirties-era films we ignore on Turner Classic Movies to compare him with. Serbia, in a modern context, isn't a funny country to poke fun at, but this film is set in the early-thirties, so the sight of the entire world collaborating with America against a sad cello-playing Serb is hillarious because he's so deliciously pathetic in his black mourning clothes. Because the film is absurdist, it's okay to laugh at his pickled dead son's heart in a jar of self-shedded tears, and yet it still manages a level of poignancy. That same aggregate of comedy and tragedy also applies to the relationship between Lady Port-Hurtly(Isabella Rossellini) and Chester's father, whose invention is so boombastic, it would make a pimp want to cut off his own legs. "The Saddest Music in the World" will take your breath away. Maddin makes Tarrantino seem conventional.… Expand

Possibly one of the worst movies we've ever suffered through. Big yuck.

Rarely do I quit watching a movie, but I could not make it through this one. I think it has some value, but I am not sure what it is. I felt like I was watching a student film in college. It that context it may be a masterpiece, but I just thought it sucked.

I don't know what this was, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was so thouroughly saturated with.. something.. I can't quite put my beer-filled glass finger on it.. This was my first Guy Maddin film and though it may not have been very good (how would I even know?) I can't stop thinking about it. More please!

This is final proof that Guy Maddin is insane. I loved it as I do many of his other films. Mark McKinney is perfect.

Wonderfully shot, great satire and off beat.

The second worst film I have ever seen. surpassed only by Greaser's Palace in the 1970's.

Having great ideas is one thing, being able to execute them in a meaningful narrative (however twisted or over-the-top) is another. I've no doubt Maddin had great fun filming the movie. Yet the heart of the movie, about the competitiveness that exists in all families, and that emotional core that should have been realized at the end when the Maria de Medeiros character becomes aware of the fate of her son, is sadly absent. What we are left with are dizzy heights of inventiveness and bizarre humor, which at the film's end, is too insubstantial to taste like anything but lite beer that has lost its fizz. … Expand

I love offbeat films but this is far and away the worst movie I've ever sat through.

German Expressionism, Canadian multiculturalism, Winnipeg winters - how can it miss! Wonderfully weird, lots of sly humour (some just for Canucks), and unforgettable images. And beer, too!

If you're tired of high-concept folderol, then meet no-concept at all. Nervously artsy and self-conscious, the movie seems like the Nazi version of a 30's Hollywood musical. Warning: it's not for kids or the faint at heart.