Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 126
Fresh: 108 | Rotten: 18
An ambitious exploration of the immigrant experience with a talented cast that serves the material well.
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Critic Reviews: 34
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 5
An ambitious exploration of the immigrant experience with a talented cast that serves the material well.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 62,435
A couple coming to terms with living in a new culture discover their troubles are compounded by their son in this drama from filmmaker Mira Nair. Ashoke (Irfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu) are a young couple who are brought together in an arranged marriage and soon leave Calcutta to seek their fortune in America. As the couple becomes accustomed to one another, they learn to deal with the coolness and superficiality of life in New York, even as they revel in the opportunities the city offers them.
Sep 2, 2006 Wide
Nov 27, 2007
$13.5M
Fox Searchlight Pictures
All Critics (131) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (110) | Rotten (19) | DVD (10)
What holds it together are the subtle loving performances by Tabu and Khan, both Bollywoood stars. They never overplay, never spell out what can be said in a glance or a shrug, communicate great passion very quietly.
It is a saga told in small pieces, a patchwork of short scenes that tumble after each other almost apologetically, as if they would love to linger a little longer, but there is too much to tell and only so much time in which to do it.
Penn is just wrong for it.
Intelligent and insightful, The Namesake celebrates family in a unique way.
This is a wonderful movie.
There's more love and heart in The Namesake than in many Hollywood dramas. I just wish the filmmakers had spread it around. Cross-cultural understanding should be a two-way street.
Sprawling, uneven, heartfelt
Buoyed by terrific performances from Irrfan Kahn and the tremendous Tabu, the film is a bit homogenized but does a good job of exploring the dynamics of blending foreign cultures with American ways of life.
lacks focus and never quite finds its footing
This movie is not bad, I just couldn't connect with it. The Namesake is poignant (I cried once) and spans many years with grace and great acting, but it may be beyond my ken to truly appreciate as it deserves.
Mira Nair's film is called The Namesake which immediately focuses our attention toward the value of names and naming (and that theme is explored occasionally within the film), but to slip even further down the rabbit hole, the more intriguing area of disc
If you're somebody who's spent your life really angry about the name your parents stuck you with, then you'll relate wholeheartedly to Harold and Kumer Go To White Castle's Kal Penn in The Namesake, cringing whenever he's called Gogol Ganguli.
Kal Penn, who got kooky for 'Harold and Kumer Go To White Castle,' shows his impressive serious side here as Gogol Ganguli, a guy who suspects that his given name may be a fatal turnoff with females.
A magnificent meditation on what it might mean for many immigrants to be American in the 21st Century.
A fascinating and gripping drama on the search for identity...
The all too familiar tale of the upwardly mobile immigrants conflicted between tradition and modernity is played out for all it is worth.
This film, about a young Bengali American wrestling with a cultural identity crisis, is a nice take on the culture clash/cultural identity film, and also marks a nice change of pace for Kal Penn. True, he had a serious role on House, but there was also a lot of humor.This is a more mature work for him, even though
June 17, 2011Super Reviewer
A beautiful film, great screenplay and direction that brings a terrific cast. Fresh.
June 13, 2011Super Reviewer
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