What Douglas Sirk did for big-budget Hollywood melodrama in films like Imitation of Life, Andrew Bujarski is doing for the low-budget indie.
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08/31/06
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Mutual Appreciation (2006)
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Reviews Counted:51
Fresh:45
Rotten:6
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: Director Bujalski continues to give cinematic voice to awkward, literate twentysomethings with noteworthy smarts and tenderness.
Theatrical Release:Sep 1, 2006 Limited
Synopsis: Alan (Justin Rice), a musician whose band has just broken up, shows up in New York to pursue his burgeoning rock and roll career. He starts by searching for a drummer for a show he's already lined... [More]
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Reviews for Mutual Appreciation
Top CriticThis new film will likely earn even fewer fans but it's an even more accomplished work.
09/28/06
The shaggy honesty is bracing and the modest stories of young adults too tentative and nervous to do more than talk around an issue have a perceptive authenticity that doesn't shake off easily.
12/07/06
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new awkward.
09/08/06
Director Andrew Bujalski and his amazing cast create such a unique and addicting experience that these 110 minutes go by in no time at all and the only thing you want when it’s all over is more.
12/17/05
The focus is narrow, but its scrutiny is absolutely unerring.
05/04/07
The dark side of a Waldorf education.
01/18/07
You can't exactly call it progress, but it is thrilling (in a low-key sort of way) to see real young adults looking and acting the way they do, light years away from the toothy flesh-bots that have supplanted them on screen.
09/08/06
Top CriticTwice now [director] Bujalski has created a compelling film on a shoestring budget, making me wonder what he could do with some real fiscal backing.
09/26/06
This second film...is the more assured of the two...gives one the feeling of discovery, of finding a diamond in the rough.
09/11/06
Written and directed by Andrew Bujalski, this wonderful independent film won't save or change your life, but it may make your heart swell.
08/31/06
Top CriticBujalski is a shrewd comic observer, and astute enough a director to get the most of his engaging actors.
05/04/07
[Bujalski’s] free-floating comedies of manners -- of rudderless young people who can’t articulate their feelings to themselves, let alone others -- turn out to be shapely, cunning, and indelibly strange.
08/21/06
Top CriticThe latest from Funny Ha Ha director Andrew Bujalski -- the cinema's reigning poet laureate of postcollegiate anomie -- is another baggy, charmingly disheveled romp through awkward courtship rituals and uncomfortable silences.
09/07/06
[Mutual Appreciation] carries a rush that has rarely been felt in a movie since the early New Wave.
09/01/06
Just because it's like real life doesn't mean it's inherently interesting.
12/08/06
Mutual Appreciation shows life as contingent, conditional, enigmatic, never finally realized, as, in short, everything that the Harvey Mansfields of the world abhor, and it shows why to accept this kind of life is an act of strength.
10/20/06
If this is the sound of a new generation, then it may be the first generation cautious enough to embrace friendship as mightier than love.
08/30/06
Top CriticOne of Bujalski's gifts is his ability to give every part, no matter how big or small, a sense of intelligence and life that extends beyond the frame and running time, and in this his work recalls the best of both Mike Leigh and Richard Linklater.
08/31/06
Top CriticMore than an effortlessly perceptive observer, Bujalski has honed deceptively stylized visuals to serve deceptively stylized drama. Isolated by their lonesome, compositions are so inert as to seem intentionally inexpressive, but altogether, a visual strat
09/06/06
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