An American Rhapsody (2001)

The Worst Film Ever

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Being the daughter of parents which also fled to American during the Cold War, this movie touched my heart. I watched it with my mother and two sisters. Since we all speak fluent hungarian, we did not need the subtitles which was a lot of fun, especially when we caught mistakes in the subtitles. The film brought back sad and scary memories to my mother. Tony Goldwyn did a good job speaking the language. The only criticism I have, is that it was unrealistic for the main characters to speak English as well as they did in such a short period of time. I doubt English was taught in the Hungarian schools back during that time. Also, it was not that easy starting a life in America at first. You had to work very hard and had very little, nothing was handed to you. The movie came across as though they lived comfortably quite easily and early on. Both my parents spent time in immigration camps in NY, which is were they met, they worked hard, scratched and clawed for everything they had. Not easy as it is now. Over all I liked the Film and still recommend it.

"American Rhapsody" is an exceptionally well-written, acted, and directed Lifetime TV/Hallmark Hall of Fame-like movie. Based on the life of the debut writer/director Eva Gardos, the movie adds the immigrant refugee perspective to the teen-age rebellion genre. While I can't know if the black-and-white scenes in 1950's Hungary are portrayed accurately, the Kodachrome sights and sounds of growing up in '50's and '60's suburbia are among the most acutely portrayed I've ever seen in the movies. While my parents weren't the ones with foreign accents--it was my grandmother-- boy do I remember that making me different from the white bread around me. Scarlett Johannsson turns in another stellar performance, as in "Ghost World." This is Natassja Kinski's best role in years, and Tony Goldwyn does fine in the sympathetic paternal role that Aidan Quinn usually does. Even the kid who is "Grace" in TV's "State of Grace" is apt. All this quality helps to overcome the sentiment and nostalgia, and the creator does avoid the didacticism of most heart-warming TV movies on the same subject of reconciliation.A fine PG-13 family movie, though I would have liked to see more of what Gardos said in an interview that in her real life rebellion "I did worse."(originally written 8/11/2001)

I was totally absorbed when I watched the movie about 2 months ago, i watched 2 time in a row. It was really moving, and I guess if you really watch it carefully, and understand all the stories in the movie, you would probably fall into tears at some moments. So basically the girl was growing in her home country where her parents escaped to the US because of the political/war reason. But when the girl was warmly greeted in the US airport when she was five years old, she had very serious homesickness. She thought of her foster parents in Hungary very often until she was grown up to 15. and quite understandably, her dad promised her to send her back to her foster parents if she still felt uncomfortable until she was aged. this was a trip to remember, but the director obviously was in a rush, so even though she was quite happy with her foster parents when she was in Hungary, she left again, and went back to her parents in the US. I still did not understand why the girl desired to get back even she had set up some links in the US. and surprisingly she got back soon after she met her grandmom in Hungary. But i like her foster parents so much and their brilliant performance lightened the movie a lot and especially her foster mother, who was really sincere in the film. But the worst one in the movie would be Scarllett Johanson, i saw some other movies of hers. but i did not like any of them. Her voice was bad, and her performance was totally disappointing to me.

I had to pinch myself when I read a previous review calling this a profound cinematic work of art! I just hope that reviewer hasn't seen many films in order to make that statement. This is worse than most TV or direct to video films and respected critic Roger Ebert gave it three stars!?. The direction starts off promising. The escape from Communist Hungary is recreated in black and white that has the look and feel of an old film but after this it descends into mediocrity with a strong reliance on flashback and heavy-handed symbolism. The acting is pretty average all around except Scarlett Johanssen whose portrayal of the teenage Suzanna was good given the limitations of the script, which is pretty limited. What lowered it below being an average, sentimental TV drama was a general lack of respect for the history and culture of Hungary. The representation of 1960's Hungary is dreadfully inaccurate with various factual errors. Although much of the Hungarian scenes were shot on location in Budapest, the rural scenes were suspiciously Romanian. Much of the language was blatantly an English script translated, and therefore the Hungarian language is often used inaccurately and unrealistically, particularly the phrase "I love you" which is not said in the same way as in the English language. The final insult is that much of the "traditional" Hungarian music in the background wasn't actually Hungarian but of Slav origin. Although apparently a vaguely autobiographical story of Eva Gardos, the director, this film shows remarkable ignorance to it's subject matter. Not recommended and certainly not an example of a "new dimension" in filmmaking by any standards.