- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
80The central trio of actors deliver engaging, pitch-perfect work.
-
80Terminal illness, depression, suicide and one very angry young man: If there's such a thing as a kitchen-sink comedy, writer-director Lone Scherfig's sad but often very funny film is it.
-
80If we never do find out exactly why Wilbur is so intent on offing himself, it almost doesn't matter, given Sives' magnetic, star-making performance and the careful, elating mixture of comedy and pathos.
-
80Call this a brooding comedy or a darkly whimsical drama, "Wilbur's" willingness to mix gallows humor and real sadness make it something on which labels do not easily fit.
-
80Like its humor, the film's sentiment sneaks up on you, and so does the dramatic reversal that makes it something more than a collection of wry anecdotes.
-
80Given its impressive balance of charm and bite, it looks like anything but suicide.
-
80What makes Wilbur worth watching are its smaller bits: Mads Mikkelsen's hilarious performance as a taciturn psychiatrist and Julia Davis's equally funny portrayal of a needy group therapy counselor.
-
78The film moves so subtly, in fact, and so seamlessly between wry humor and the emotional wreckage of life-or-death, that it was with some shock that I found myself weeping halfway through the film.
-
75A warm human comedy.
-
75Exceptional black dramatic comedy.
-
75Directed and cowritten by a veteran of Denmark's no-frills "Dogma 95" movement, this is a quiet, no-frills drama with simple human values at its core.
-
75Like most movies about death, the gentle, quirky Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself ultimately turns out to be a story about embracing life.
-
75A story about people learning to know themselves through relationships to others -- delivered with gentle, offbeat humor.
-
75In the end, "Wilbur"' manages to look death square in the face and walk away laughing.
-
75It's the dynamic between the three leads, Rawlins, Sives and Henderson - and the young McKinlay, who's like a miniature Shirley Henderson - that is this oddball and bittersweet story's pulsing heart.
-
75Played by likable newcomer Jamie Sives, who resembles Colin Farrell without the scowl, Wilbur grows on you the same way this offbeat movie does.
-
75By the end, Wilbur becomes an unusually complicated character: We empathize with his suffering, find his selfishness appalling, enjoy his gloomy wit and frank self-appraisal.
-
75A distancing cynicism has been slathered over the story's maudlin core, with the hope perhaps that between these two conventional extremes resides a genuine emotional truth. That may be the case, but "Wilbur" doesn't quite get to it.
-
70A mood-switching meditation on love and death that goes out of its way to yank our chains.
-
70Full of life -- which is a very good thing to say about a story that turns on death -- wonderfully odd, and a gallery of perfect performances.
-
60Intended to be shamelessly heart-tugging and even uplifting in an odd way, but it's recommended mainly as an acting showcase.
-
50Wants to be as shocking as its title, but it doesn't have the nerve.
-
50A kindred exercise in ensemble cheer and cozy humanism -- not as sentimental as it might be but cheerfully affirmative in dispelling the darkness of its premise.
-
Provides some wry chuckles, but much of it is as dark as a Glasgow winter.
-
Scherfig aims at bittersweet irony, but Wilbur's suicide attempts yield neither pathos nor humor.
-
42Too chicly depressive -- and, for the most part, too dull -- to bear.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 4 out of 5
-
Mixed: 1 out of 5
-
Negative: 0 out of 5
-
ScannerG9