Average Rating: 3.3/10
Reviews Counted: 12
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 12
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 3/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 7
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.6/5
User Ratings: 110
Two lost souls find meaning in a world of chaos in this independent drama directed by Alejandro Chomski and adapted from the play by Wendy Hammond. Desperate teen Maggie (Angela Sarafayan) is on the run from her abusive father, and young immigrant David (Jesse Garcia) is scouring the streets of L.A. for his missing mother. When David and Maggie meet, their fractured lives finally start to make sense. A Beautiful Life also features Dana Delany and Debi Mazar. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Oct 2, 2009 Wide
Mar 1, 2011
New Films International
All Critics (13) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (0) | Rotten (12)
[Lau] successfully balances satire and sentimentality in the first half, but loses his bearings in the sappier second part.
Whatever does work here - mainly a soulful performance by Liu Ye - ultimately gets lost in the excess.
Set among the mean streets and meaner people of downtown Los Angeles, this laughably clichéd dive into sexual masochism and hardscrabble survival replaces story with outline and characters with place holders.
It's tough to find comedy in a dead-serious, skid-row-set film about homelessness, sexual abuse, incest and the exploitation of immigrants, but the misguided A Beautiful Life manages to provide unintentional laughs by the barrel.
A Beautiful Life makes little attempt to be credible or original. And the acting is poor.
A Beautiful Life is nicely shot and features some appealing actors, and that's about it for the good news. The bad news is that the characters and situations are platitudes and the story is so heavy-handed that the film is hard to sit through.
The film strains credulity by pushing its characters wildly to and fro with a shamelessly sentimental screenplay.
Unfortunately, Lau throws in one too many wrinkles, squandering our empathy by forcing us through a long-winded relationship involving betrayal and illness.
An amateurish, contrived drama that's neither captivating, insightful nor engrossing.
There's simply not enough for Maggie and David to do to sustain an entire movie.
This intertwined tale of people struggling on society's fringe plays like bad community theater.
This was a huge waste of time! Acting was VERY bad, especially Angela Sarafayan!! Everything about this movie was amateurish. Don't know who outfitted Ling, but that was a disaster. Whoever put this out, gather all copies and BURN THEM!
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