| 90 |
Washington Post
In almost every way that I can think of, L'Auberge Espagnole is a perfect movie... It is a film that feels alive.
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| 90 |
Wall Street Journal
Blissfully funny, terrifically intelligent and tender when you least expect it to be.
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| 90 |
Washington Post
It's an exhilarating, funny, very sweet movie.
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| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
L’Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Hotel) is unexpectedly entertaining because it captures the point in young adulthood when life is unseriously serious, or maybe seriously unserious.
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| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
A love song to the new Europe (Klapisch's original title: Euro Pudding) and a snapshot of a polyglot gang on the cusp of kind-of-reckless youth and responsibility-burdened adulthood.
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| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
This community finds its balance with an easy effortlessness.
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| 80 |
The New Yorker
Vignettish and offhand, but it’s extremely pleasant, and it suggests what can be done with lightweight equipment and a loose-limbed approach to the right subject. [19 May 2003, p. 94]
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| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Exhilarating comedy...Its warm, embracing spirit is refreshing in these divisive times.
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| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Not since Lukas Moodysson's "Together" has communal living been depicted with such warmth and feeling for the entire ensemble.
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| 80 |
Dallas Observer
Writer-director-actor Cedric Klapisch simultaneously shows great moviemaking flair and reveals a very peculiar worldview.
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| 75 |
USA Today
It energetically captures the frenzied pace of contemporary existence, the complexities of life in a multicultural world, the rootless joys of living in a foreign city and the heady world of possibilities one envisions while in college.
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| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The movie is as light and frothy as a French comedy, which is what it is, a reminder that Cedric Klapisch also directed "When the Cat's Away" (1996).
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| 75 |
Miami Herald
Best of all, L'Auberge Espagnol uses Barcelona as a veritable character, a picturesque, vivacious place where, as one character puts it, ''No one eats before 10 p.m."
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| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Does a beautiful job of capturing that mood -- the exuberance and wistfulness of one man's last year of youthful irresponsibility before joining the rat race.
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| 75 |
ReelViews
A lighthearted, good-natured motion picture that contains enough humor to leaven the tone and keep the drama from becoming too serious.
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| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
The atmosphere of gentle communal chaos is authentic enough to become the movie's dramatic center.
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| 75 |
Boston Globe
The movie also rather sweetly suggests that the apartment being shared is Europe itself. There's a reason this warm, stylish human comedy was a big hit all across the Continent: It conveys a new generation's conviction that borders no longer matter.
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| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Allison Benedikt
Klapisch frequently uses voiceovers to express Xavier’s thoughts, and Duris expresses those thoughts beautifully, with a quirky open face, tuned perfectly to whatever his character is thinking.
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| 70 |
LA Weekly
The characters are well-observed and mercifully unrepresentative of their home countries. (Kevin Bishop is laugh-out-loud funny as a clueless British visitor who shows up to offend more than one national sensibility.)
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| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Jennifer Vanasco
The film is a pleasant ramble through an eventful year. Klapisch's special effects--cameras speeding down hallways, superimposed images--are both amusing and annoying.
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| 70 |
The New York Times
Presents an appealing and persuasive picture of European integration, in which national differences, which once sparked military and political conflict, are preserved because they make life sexier and more interesting.
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| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A film whose limitations are the same as its appeal: It's a bauble. Running at barely more than 80 minutes, the film is both a travelogue and a commercial for swinging polyglot Europe.
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| 60 |
TV Guide
The real stars of the film are Francois Emmanuelli's vibrant production design, Klapisch's flair with inventive optical effects and above all Barcelona itself, captured here in all its baroque brilliance.
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| 60 |
The New Republic
The pace is fairly hectic, which it needs to be. (Mustn't linger on bubbles.) The performances are warm, especially the tender Judith Godrèche as the doctor's wife.
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| 58 |
Portland Oregonian
While breezy and fun, the film is also flimsy and sloppy in style and content.
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| 50 |
New York Post
At times, writer-director Cedric Klapsich seems to be trying to copy the frestyle of "Amelie," but L'Auberge achieves only a fraction of its charm.
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| 50 |
New York Daily News
Beware of movies whose creators boast of the little effort involved. Little reward is what you're likely to get.
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| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
A dodgy, hit-or-miss affair that never quiet seems to gel: too many lumpy bits, and not enough crème.
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| 38 |
Charlotte Observer
Movies can certainly be worse than bad sitcoms, and this is one of them.
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| 30 |
Salon.com
Klapisch wants his characters shiny bright, and winds up making them excruciatingly dull in the process. Watching L'Auberge Espagnole is like seeing the young Maoist revolutionaries of Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 "La Chinoise" body-snatched by the international touring company of "Up With People."
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| 30 |
Village Voice
Cédric Klapisch has been compared to Truffaut, but the new-waver's weakness for glib sentimentalism seems to have left the biggest impression on L'Auberge Espagnole.
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