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100The film's freedom and control, its inspiration and focus, announce it as the work of a confident and mature artist.
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91It's a summery idyll: his most entertaining picture since "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994) or maybe "Sweet and Lowdown" (1999).
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Allen has crafted a wry and thoughtful film about the peculiar stirrings of the heart that is certainly his most accomplished piece of work since 2005's "Match Point" and arguably his funniest in the eight years since "Small Time Crooks."
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88After years of diminishing returns, Woody Allen spectacularly returns to form with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, his funniest movie in years and arguably his sexiest.
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88Smoking, shouting, practically shooting off sparks, Cruz spreads a wildfire sexuality across Allen's sunny tableau of Catalan country picnics and scenic Barcelona ramblings.
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88As exhilarating, captivating and enjoyable as a summer romance in an exotic city.
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83Through it all, Vicky Cristina Barcelona remains unaccountably romantic, a confirmation that love, elusive and painful as it can be, is still worth pursuing.
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80The two most hilarious characters, played by Spain's two most famous actors, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, are nothing if not cliches about tempestuous Latin lovers. But, boy, does Allen have fun with those cliches.
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80Within Allen’s recent output, Vicky Cristina is the highlight. See it for beautiful locales, an ambivalent look at human relationships and a clutch of great performances, especially from Cruz.
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80Ought to have been an eye-roller. What a surprise that it's so seductive. The Woodman lives!
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80Offers potent romantic fantasy elements for men and women and a cast that should produce the best commercial returns for a Woody Allen film since "Match Point."
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Vicky Cristina Barcelona is beautiful because Allen is now decidedly in control of this phase of his career, which blends the sharpness of his older dramas with a newly acquired expatriate hipness.
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80Allen can be literal-minded about his thematic polarities, but, in this movie, he has put actors with first-class temperament on the screen, and his writing is both crisp and ambivalent: he works everything out with a stringent thoroughness that still allows room for surprise.
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75Woody Allen's sexiest movie ever.
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75The actors are attractive, the city is magnificent, the love scenes don't get all sweaty, and everybody finishes the summer a little wiser and with a lifetime of memories. What more could you ask?
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75I enjoyed it as much as any Allen film of the last 20 years.
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75Cruz, who has never been able to fully show what she's capable of as an actress in an English-language film, takes to the role of the dark-haired hellcat with a sexy, bewitching fury.
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75Allen does craft a fairly observant account of human behavior, so that the solemn aspects don't put a damper on the humor, or vice versa.
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75Gotham gives way to Gaudi and the Met to Miro, but the sensibility is the same, the city as a precious treasure, and so is the message: Life may be hard and short, love may be flawed or doomed, but, my, aren't we blessed with lovely distractions.
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75Sincere, delicately funny, a little staid, a little precious, and more interested in the ebb and flow of the heart than in the dubious rewards of sensational narrative twists.
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75The movie goes down very easily.
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75With all this going for it, Vicky Cristina Barcelona should be better than it is. But there's something intriguing going on here. It's a movie about the sacrifices that people make to be happy.
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70Let's not kid ourselves: There's something about Javi.
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70Although Vicky Cristina trips along winningly, carried by the beauty of its locations and stars -- and all the gauzy romanticism those enchanted places and people imply -- it reverberates with implacable melancholy, a sense of loss.
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70It's just fine. Not great; just fine.
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The narration, aided by a terrific score, does streamline the storytelling, and adds to it a faintly sardonic top note.
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67The writing is zippy, the story spins like a top, and Bardem turns out to be the wittiest of leading men.
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63There's a terrific movie buried in Woody Allen's tale of two American girls broadening their horizons in Barcelona, and every once in a while tantalizing glimpses penetrate the twee narration and mannered performances.
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63Fitfully good.
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63An atypical Allen film. Some of his usual themes are present - in particular, his neuroses about sex and love - but this movie does not bear enough Allen hallmarks to single it out as his work.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 48 out of 77
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Mixed: 5 out of 77
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Negative: 24 out of 77
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