Love Is All You Need (2013)
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Reviews Counted: 103
Fresh: 76 | Rotten: 27
Undeniably slight and fluffy, Love Is All You Need is redeemed by its picturesque setting and warm performances by Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm.
Average Rating: 6.4/10
Critic Reviews: 31
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 9
Undeniably slight and fluffy, Love Is All You Need is redeemed by its picturesque setting and warm performances by Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 7,188
Movie Info
LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED is directed by Golden Globe (R) and Oscar (R) winning filmmaker Susanne Bier, written by Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen and starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm. Philip (Brosnan), an Englishman living in Denmark, is a lonely, middle-aged widower and estranged single father. Ida (Dyrholm) is a Danish hairdresser, recuperating from a long bout of illness, who's just been left by her husband for a younger woman, Thilde. The fates of these two bruised souls are about to
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Cast
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Pierce Brosnan
Philip -
Trine Dyrholm
Ida -
Molly Blixt Egelind
Astrid -
Sebastian Jessen
Patrick -
Paprika Steen
Benedikte -
Kim Bodnia
Leif -
Christiane Schaumbur...
Tilde -
Micky Skeel-Hansen
Kenneth -
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All Critics (103) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (76) | Rotten (27)
Result: sufficient pleasure.
Top CriticThe middle-aged romance between the central characters is a lovely thing, and that makes up for everything.
Bier is daring to deal with both familial dysfunction and mature romance without painting either in the standard broad strokes.
We've seen enough romantic comedy to know these two are destined to fall for each other, but Bier is that rare filmmaker who can make you wonder if there will actually be a happy ending.
Pierce Brosnan isn't the only reason to see Love is All You Need. He's merely the best reason to seek out Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's entertaining if familiar romantic comedy.
I lost count of how many times "That's Amore" turned up on the soundtrack, and the comic situations are so stale that the whole thing plays like a Scandinavian Tyler Perry movie.
While Love is All You Need is better than most films of its type, it's still unable to overcome the numerous cliches that come attached to such a story.
There's something about a free spirit, even in a movie, that makes everything and everyone around her feel more vibrant.
I think Bier might be a little too acute an observer of human behavior to agree with the simple premise of her film's title, but she makes us believe it for a while, anyway.
Lead actress Trine Dyrholm is the best thing about this pat, conventional comedy-drama of romantic reassurance for middle-aged moviegoers and their mothers.
Buffeted by languorous Italian vistas and the emotional depth of the characters, the film falls more into the Nancy Meyers camp of rom com, in which relatable late-in-life romances are played out against sumptuous settings.
The string of awkwardly hilarious family moments will provide plenty of laughs while also endearing the characters to viewers of this Danish romantic comedy...And the more serious moments make for a film that's also surprisingly poignant.
This bittersweet, multilingual romantic comedy is just as fluffy and forgettable as its title suggests.
Even if it's flawed by a few obvious clichés, Love Is All You Need still comes highly recommended.
Don't think for a moment that postcard prettiness is all that this picture has going for it ... Susanne Bier has made a smart, winning movie that's tougher than many others in its field.
The question isn't whether the two people at the heart of Susanne Bier's Love Is All You Need will get together, but how ... Bier demonstrates excellence in a genre where excellence isn't expected
A sneakily affecting and entirely pleasant movie elevated by its cast.
Pitched somewhere between a frothy Hollywood romantic comedy and a more sophisticated European family drama, Susanne Bier's Love Is All You Need succeeds as neither.
A watchable romance that needed a lighter touch.
There are smiles and laughter to be found in Love Is All You Need, but they're not the gossamer sort that evaporate in the moonlight.
It is a perfectly timed, wish-fulfillment summer vacation movie set somewhere idyllic that you can't possibly afford to visit.
Audience Reviews for Love Is All You Need
Super Reviewer
Scandinavian cinema, and its TV, has become synonymous with gritty crime dramas in recent years. The romantic comedy isn't the first genre you associate with the region, particularly Denmark, the home of such controversy courting directors as Lars Von Trier, Nicholas Winding Refn and Thomas Vinterberg. Indeed, Susanne Bier, the director of 'Love Is All You Need', is herself known for much heavier fare. The theme of coping with death runs through her work and is again present here, with Brosnan playing a man who becomes angry at the world following his wife's senseless death in a car accident.
That's not to say this is a heavy movie, far from it, but it does contain a level of substance absent from the romantic comedies Hollywood churns out. For a start, our two leads are actually likable and worth rooting for. Dyrholm feels like an everyday middle-aged woman who's been dropped into a rom-com scenario. Brosnan's character is more of a movie archetype but he manages to make the role seem fresh. The Irishman is a very under-rated actor, possibly because he doesn't take himself too seriously, but he possesses a range he rarely receives credit for. In the over-looked 2006 western, 'Seraphim Falls' he delivered a stunning dramatic performance and here he shows just how good his comic timing is.
Apart from a disappointingly predictable ending, 'LIAYN' is a charming rom-com aimed at middle-aged viewers but accessible to all but those too ignorant to read subtitles.
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Love Is All You Need (DE)
- Love Is All You Need (UK)
Brosnan and Dyrholm's characters are well fleshed out, and undergo a cliched, yet well acted arc. Then there are the extremely poorly written husband sister-in-law. There's nothing good about these two, and they seem there to move the story and character development of others along, doing so in a rather crude manner that made me cringe. This unevenness totally disappoints, and takes away from the film as a whole.
Brosnan is a most pleasant surprise!