Charming and eventually poignant.
Comment
05/13/04
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Good Bye, Lenin! (2004)
89
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:102
Fresh:91
Rotten:11
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: Funny and poignant social critique of German reunification.
Theatrical Release:Feb 27, 2004 Limited
Box Office: $3,921,721
Synopsis: October, 1989 was a bad time to fall into a coma if you lived in East Germany – and this is precisely what happens to Alex’s proudly socialist mother. Alex has a big problem on his hands when she... [More]
Starring: Katrin Sass, Daniel Bruhl, Chulpan Khamatova, Alexander Beyer
Director: Wolfgang Becker
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Reviews for Good Bye, Lenin!
Top Critic[Director] Becker blends comedy, pathos, political commentary, witty dialogue and beautiful visual elements into a seamless movie.
05/13/04
The story is almost gag-inducingly silly and unlikely, but director Wolfgang Becker's film is just sweet enough to help the medicine go down.
05/10/04
Its geopolitical lessons smacked of banality.
05/09/04
A very well-written story with fully-realized characters.
05/06/04
Good Bye, Lenin! slides a fascinating history lesson into a clever, heartwarming tragicomedy even if the film — like East Germany itself - is a bit inefficient.
05/04/04
The hero's imaginary GDR is not just a child's-eye view of a socialist Utopia but a literal motherland, contrived for the love of his mother...
05/04/04
Often droll and clever but rarely genuinely funny. Its real power asserts itself only in the final reel, when a genuine sense of melancholia settles in.
04/30/04
Becker stays tapped into complicated and painful truths while keeping us laughing.
04/30/04
A sweet and quirky tale, [it's] a movie in which I never expected to cry, but I did.
04/24/04
It's a sentimental and sophisticated alternative to the standard American view of the Cold War's end.
04/23/04
A funny movie that rises above farce to the level of sophisticated satire.
04/23/04
It is a sweethearted comedy about the fall of Communism and the lingering nostalgia for an East Germany that no longer exists.
04/22/04
Top CriticGood Bye, Lenin! does a better job of summarizing the politics and recent history of Eastern Europe than you might think could be crammed into a movie that runs less than two hours.
04/16/04
An ironic, nostalgic and often poetic reminiscence about the period circa 1989.
04/15/04
The film seems overlong and drawn out, with variations on the same joke occurring throughout.
04/11/04
A welcome surprise....combines momentous history with a warm, good-natured story about one family’s life before and after the Cold War.
04/09/04
Often hilarious but essentially melancholy tale of a family getting trampled by the march of history.
04/09/04
While the film has many serious moments the plot itself is more appropriate to a farce than to a semi-serious comedy-drama.
04/07/04
For a film about the fall of the Berlin Wall, there sure are a lot of laughs in Wolfgang Becker's surprising fourth feature.
04/06/04
Latest News for Good Bye, Lenin!
July 18, 2005:
Watch the First 6 Mins of "The Edukators"
The first six minutes of "The Edukators" is up on Rotten Tomatoes. An import from Germany, the film tells a story of love and anarchy. More...
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