Adoration (2009)
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Reviews Counted: 97
Fresh: 59 | Rotten: 38
A complex and thought-provoking work, Atom Egoyan's Adoration works well as both mystery and engaging drama.
Average Rating: 6.7/10
Critic Reviews: 28
Fresh: 21 | Rotten: 7
A complex and thought-provoking work, Atom Egoyan's Adoration works well as both mystery and engaging drama.
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Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 1,974
Movie Info
Director Atom Egoyan explores the concept of cyberspace as a place for redemption in this drama about an adolescent boy named Simon (Devon Bostick) who reinvents his life on the Internet. Before long, Simon's deeply personal journey provokes strong reactions from around the globe. Rachel Blanchard and Scott Speedman co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
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Cast
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Arsinée Khanjian
Sabine -
Scott Speedman
Tom -
Rachel Blanchard
Rachel -
Noam Jenkins
Sami -
Devon Bostick
Simon -
Kenneth Welsh
Morris -
Thomas Hauff
Nick -
Tony Nardi
Principal Robert -
Paul Soles
Ira -
Geraldine O'Rawe
Carole -
Aaron Poole
Daniel -
Soo Garay
Granddaughter -
James Binkley
Driver -
Katie Boland
Hannah -
Hailee Sisera
Jennifer -
Janice Stein
Janet
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Adoration Trailer & Photos
All Critics (98) | Top Critics (28) | Fresh (59) | Rotten (38) | DVD (4)
Unfortunately the elaborately unspooled plot delivering these ideas in dramatic form is so scraggy and effortful it defeats the cast and rather compromises our involvement.
Top CriticA gimmicky, sad and beautifully acted mystery that keeps its secrets even when it loses its grasp of the logical.
After a promising start, this ambitious but ultimately clunky and unwieldy movie dissolves into a pile of ideas in dire need of dramatization.
Egoyan is nothing if not low key; and as dramatic as passages are here, he keeps the tone under control and the story believable.
Bostick turns in a quietly mesmerizing performance, capturing Simon's sense of loss without slipping into pathos.
In Atom Egoyan's disconcerting and unpredictable Adoration, a young man's attempt to make sense of himself and his family's history turns strange when his re-imagined version of that history becomes a combustible topic for online chatter.
In Egoyanland it's always winter, but that can be reassuring.
Uneven enigmatic social drama that's framed like an imaginative mystery story.
A chilly intellectualism sucks the dramatic life out of Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan's Adoration.
Though Egoyan, as usual, frequently strains credibility he at least manages to weave all of this into a fairly absorbing detective story that explores the roots and damaging implications of prejudice with unexpected grace.
Without the constrictions of an adapted text, Egoyan's creativity turns towards intellectual exercise.
The most positive thing you can say about Atom Egoyan's latest film is that it is well-intentioned. But the most honest thing that you can say is that it's a painfully misguided and pretentious folly.
A pretty fatuous equivalence, made much more implausible by the clotted structure, some wince-makingly unconvincing scenes and truly terrible acting.
Atom Egoyan is up to his old tricks with this fractured, elusive drama, resembling but never measuring up to the ones which launched his career.
Populated with rich, complex characters, Adoration's impressive array of ideas is matched by its visual beauty and narrative ingenuity.
If you can buy into the improbable, this ultimately pans out as a wise and rather poignant story.
A complex, compelling brew, enhanced throughout by Egoyan's hypnotic style. Sadly, it's also weirdly remote and agonisingly slow.
An ill-judged crack at a mainstream thriller.
A characteristically skewed but cerebral look at a dysfunctional family in a movie much easier to admire than actually like.
Theme is all-powerful, with characters verbally fondling their histories and identities - and, in one typically po-faced scene, intellectualising vomit.
Egoyan has hold of serious material...but it is untidily stitched into the narrative, crushing any illusion of spontaneity and loading the dialogue with heavy-duty didacticism.
But when he turns from intellectual debate to the way human beings actually speak and behave, you might feel that he'd be better off writing essays himself.
Too self-conscious by half and often unnecessarily complicated. It's as if Egoyan, who wrote and produced it as well as directed, has so much on his mind that he can't sort it all out.
Seamlessly marrying the personal and the political, Adoration plots a labyrinthine course through all manner of millennial issues...
The main thrust is a desire to say something -- anything -- about terrorism and the 9/11 attacks, but Egoyan's idea makes no sense.
Audience Reviews for Adoration
Super Reviewer
Director: Atom Egoyan
Summary: Assigned to translate a terrorism-related news story for his French class, teen Simon (Devon Bostick) weaves personal details into his tale, which soon leaves the Internet swirling with rumors that Simon's dead father was an actual terrorist. Acclaimed auteur Atom Egoyan's haunting and lyrical drama -- cleverly structured as a mystery -- also stars Scott Speedman as Simon's caretaker uncle and Arsinée Khanjian as Simon's persistent teacher.
My Thoughts: "The story is a dialogue driven film with discussions surrounding terrorism, religion and prejudice. This boy Simon, has, with some help from his french teacher, fabricated a story into making his father out to be a terrorist. It was suppose to be a french assignment about putting the story into your own words as the teacher is reading it aloud. SImon writes it as the third person, as if he was apart of it. His french teacher encourages him to go further with it as a drama piece and to not reveal that it is all fabricated. But as Simon continues telling the story, his own story gets tangled within it and the lines of truth and lies become a bit blurred. Also the french teacher has her own secret and reasons for having him explore this lie/story, but you will have to watch the film to figure it out. The whole film is completely absorbing. It can also be confusing at times with the flashbacks. But definitely worth the rental."
Super Reviewer
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- Tom: Maybe people should stick to their own kind.
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- Simon: If my friends found out it isn't true, it wouldn't be the same.
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- Simon: Innocence is a hard thing to describe. It's like a scent.
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- Simon: The first thing you have to realize about my mother is that she was extremely trusting.
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Movie: ID: 770784742 Title: Adoration Release Date: 2008-05-22 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 4 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Simons Geheimnis (DE)
