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100Always hard-hitting and often grimly, revealingly satirical.
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100Foreign films can be as enchanting as ever, and perspective-expanding too. The latest proof is Up and Down, a wonderfully funny, giddily intricate Czech comedy.
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91Up and Down captures Prague life with a fervor that's comical but a longing that's serious; no one is easy to pigeonhole.
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90A powerful Czech drama with comic flourishes.
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90This fluidly paced film, with its keen observation of the confused longing for love, family and stability in an inherently unstable world, nonetheless keeps faith with the Czech genius for holding the tonal line between tragedy and the absurd.
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90Ought to gain some viewers here with its dark sense of humor and stylish cinematography by Jan Malir. Director Jan Hrebejk names Mike Leigh as an influence, but frankly he's way cooler.
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All of these folks are damaged souls, trying their best to find purpose and forgiveness.
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88A bruising, dark comedy.
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80Accomplished and affecting art house fare.
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80Buoyed by an unreserved humanism and a cheerful sense of the absurd.
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80It skips from buoyant satire to domestic melodrama, leaving behind a curious mix of emotions.
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80A vibrant, immediate treatise on love and cultural identity in a complex new world of fluid borders and deep suspicions in the stunning new Czech drama Up and Down.
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80Haunting little film, whose chaotic universe is churned up by the conflict between the haves and the have-nots.
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80It's agreeable to see a picture that holds us without perspiring to do so. We are treated not as an audience but as café chums to whom a story is being told
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80Provocative and entertaining.
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75Lacks any formulas or solutions, and is content to show us its complicated characters, their tangled lives, and the way that our need to love and be loved can lead us in opposite directions.
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75Not an ordinary film.
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75The result is an absorbing look at a country still struggling to adjust more than a decade after the fall of communism.
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75Absurdity and poignancy merge in the carefully observed Czech film Up and Down.
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75The film bears a resemblance to such multicharacter dramas as Robert Altman's ''Short Cuts" and Paul Thomas Anderson's ''Magnolia" -- like them, it's a portrait of a society straining at the seams -- but it manages the neat trick of being both charming and bilious.
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75An accomplished film that uses dark humor to leaven its serious topics.
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70Up and Down is not exactly the toughest movie on the block, but especially compared to most American comedies, it conveys a sense of scrofulous rue.
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67Has the look and feel of Euro-Altman (vastly superior to Euro-Disney, mind you).
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63Uneven and erratic and far too busy, its flashes of brilliance dimmed by overambitious meanderings.
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60Hrebejk's film remains clear-eyed and satisfyingly complex right to the bitter end.
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60Sags into a dreary, humorless family melodrama.
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50The screenplay is chock-full of political and social observation tarnished by uneven acting and editing. The clumsy humor doesn't translate well.