| 100 |
San Francisco Examiner
Barbara Shulgasser
Big Night's beauty is the fact that it is about passion.
|
| 100 |
Mr. Showbiz
It is one of the most beautifully staged American movies in a very long time.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
By the end of the movie, we have been through an emotional and a sensual wringer, in a film of great wisdom and delight.
|
| 100 |
Entertainment Weekly
The real feast is in the mix of characters, each so finely and unschmaltzily delineated in a script so confident and controlled that even the most passing of participants comes alive.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Big Night is, in a word, delicious.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
May not have the size and grandeur of some of the biographical and political epics being released this fall, but I defy you to find a better written, more honest -- or yes, more satisfying and delicious -- movie this year. [27 September 1996, Friday, p.C]
|
| 88 |
ReelViews
In addition to their deft skill with light drama, the directors understand well-placed humor, and throw just the right amount of comedy into the mix to make Big Night fun without turning it into an outright farce.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
A robustly imaginative sleeper
|
| 80 |
Time
A movie that is both as real as food on the table and as hauntingly evanescent as its taste on one's tongue.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
It's so good, so jam-packed with delights, that it leaves you gorged -- and bemoaning the fatty glop that passes for moviemaking these days.
|
| 80 |
Variety
This unlikely collaboration between actors Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott is extremely well directed, making for a smartly made, delightfully acted period piece whose sensibility neatly straddles art films and the mainstream.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
It's the moviegoing equivalent of great eating.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Staff (Not credited)
This little picture charms by virtue of its craft and patience.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
The film is loaded with brotherly affection and with warm, funny and poignant evocations of a gentler time.[20 September 1996, p.C12]
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
As delicately and deliciously prepared as the dishes it features, Big Night is a lyric to the love of food, family and persuasive acting.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Both a delightful story and a great food movie that ranks with "Like Water for Chocolate'' or "Babette's Feast.''
|
| 70 |
New Times (L.A.)
Peter Rainer
One of the few American independent films right now that actually deserves its high praise.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
There's an almost natty precision about this picture that's so rare these days in American movies that it provides satisfaction in itself.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Big Night, a scrumptious tale of great food and grand passions, belongs on the menu with such mouth-watering movie fare as "Babette's Feast" and "Like Water for Chocolate."
|
| 70 |
Film.com
Keith Simanton
Like Primo's dishes, Big Night looks and tastes (yes, it does taste) like a labor of love.
|
| 70 |
Rolling Stone
A feast of a film done on a low budget with a menu featuring top-grade acting, writing and direction.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Staff (Not credited)
The script is shapeless and it all goes on far too long.
|
| 50 |
Film.com
The story, ultimately, is about the classic conflict between a desire to cherish and protect one's unique gifts from a brutal world and a more practical instinct to compromise beauty.
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