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84
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83
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81
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81
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78
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77
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74
Orphanage, The
71
Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
71
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70
Lars and the Real Girl
69
Charlie Wilson's War
68
Business of Being Born, The
68
Delirious
68
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65
Great Debaters, The
64
Cloverfield
63
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
63
11th Hour, The
63
Hannah Takes the Stairs
60
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
57
Romulus, My Father
57
Teeth
55
Resurrecting the Champ
53
Music Within
52
Hollywood Dreams
51
Golden Compass, The
49
Good Night, The
47
Bella
47
Lions for Lambs
47
27 Dresses
46
Reservation Road
44
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43
Youth Without Youth
43
Final Season, The
41
Mad Money
41
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39
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39
P.S. I Love You
38
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37
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32
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30
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30
Cover
29
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24
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15
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7
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xx
Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Sweet and Lowdown
Sony Pictures Classics
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sexual content and some substance abuse
Starring
Sean Penn,
Samantha Morton,
Uma Thurman,
Gretchen Mol,
and
Anthony LaPaglia
Woody Allen's latest film is the fanciful biography of a legendary jazz guitarist, Emmet Ray, who clashed with lovers, gangsters, musicians and success itself in the 1930's Jazz scene. Sean Penn stars as the fictional musical genius who during the Swing Era was on his way up but could never settle down. (Sony Pictures Classics)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Woody Allen
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Woody Allen
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: June 19, 2000
Video: June 19, 2000
Theatrical: December 3, 1999
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
95 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
90
Washington Post
Rita Kempley
A quirky, tender, splendidly acted fable.

90
TNT RoughCut
Spencer Abbott
Allen's deadpan humor shines through every crevice of the film, keeping the pacing sharp, the dialogue snappy, and the situations feeling real.
88
Baltimore Sun
Ann Hornaday
(Penn)'s is a lovely, soulful performance in a movie that manages to imbue tragedy with just the right grace note of insouciance -- a movie worthy of Woody Allen himself.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Sean Penn('s) performances are master classes in the art of character development.

88
Miami Herald
Phoebe Flowers
Penn's performance is easily the best ever seen in an Allen film.

83
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Amazing as Penn is, Morton is his equal, creating a complete personality out of gestures, glances and unadorned bits of actorly business.

83
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Allen draws a snappy, loose-limbed performance from Penn.

80
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Still about as good as Allen gets, a persuasive, nuanced, and relatively graceful portrait of an egotistical yet talented jazz guitarist of the swing era, astutely played by Sean Penn.

80
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
This is one very tuneful labor of love.

80
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Undeniably pleasant, but British actress Samantha Morton quietly explodes it: Her performance is like nothing I've seen in recent years.

80
Time
Richard Corliss
Samantha Morton, as Emmet's "mute orphan half-wit" of a girlfriend, is the sweet revelation. Rarely has a performer mined such complex and potent emotion from such simple materials: a smile, a shrug, an attentive winsomeness.

80
LA Weekly
F. X. Feeney
Funny and light, all the more potent for seeming so effortless.

80
Slate
David Edelstein
Unexpectedly delectable.

80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Penn's performance is the movie's ultimate grace note. As funny and ingenious as Allen's films can get, they are rarely known for depth of character.

80
Dallas Observer
Andy Klein
It is engaging, touching, and frequently funny. Maybe because his hero is inarticulate and his heroine is mute, Allen relies far more than usual on physical comedy than on the verbal jokes that are his strongest comic suit.

80
Variety
David Stratton
The almost wall-to-wall music is glorious, with solo guitarist Howard Alden doing a sock job. Penn, incidentally, utterly convinces in the scenes in which he's seen "playing" the guitar.

78
Austin Chronicle
Sarah Hepola
A literate, sophisticated comedy whose humor and loss and hope linger in our hearts, like the jazz music it reveres, both sweet and lowdown.

75
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
Isn't Allen's finest work by a long shot, but an undeniable part of its fascination is trying to figure out what -- if anything, even unconsciously -- he's trying to say about how he treated Farrow.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Exquisitely designed, lovingly executed, beautifully scored and played, every hair and note in place, it's a movie full of irony, passion and bluesy riffs.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Edward Guthmann
The best reason in years to reconsider (Woody Allen).

75
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Penn hasn't attempted much comedy since "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," but he's masterful here.

70
Newsweek
David Ansen
Doesn't add up to any big deal. But it's a likable, lively little ditty -- one theme, some clever variations -- that never wears out its welcome.

70
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
It's a loving and comic tribute to a musical era Allen knows well.

67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
A real showcase for Penn, who seems to positively delight in playing a slimy, hateful character that most stars would not go near.

65
Mr. Showbiz
Michael Atkinson
A vapor trail of a comedy, comfortable as an old chair (and deliciously photographed in shades of melon and banana by Chinese vet Zhao Fei), but ultimately quaint and unchallenging.

63
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
Agreeable eye candy and ear candy, but it's too slight to reach as deep as it thinks it wants to reach.

63
San Francisco Examiner
Wesley Morris
Woody Allen's questionable toe-tapping faux-documentary.

60
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Affectionate, melancholy and anchored by a well thought-out performance from Sean Penn.

50
USA Today
Mike Clark
It's all very slight and only sporadically amusing, and it makes Allen's "Celebrity" from last year look even more underrated than it already is.

50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Penn's excellent acting doesn't raise his character above the level of familiar clichés about woman-chasing jazzmen.

40
Village Voice
Amy Taubin
It's the prettiest movie of the year, maybe of Allen's career.

40
Film.com
Elizabeth Weitzman
But the movie is so confused about where it wants to go, it suffers from the same identity crisis as its protagonist.

30
Film.com
Peter Brunette
A dud. Neither sweet nor low-down enough by half.


The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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