The Talent Given Us Reviews
Reeling Reviews
The unwashed talent and originality of "The Talent Given Us" makes it a compelling and fascinating film.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Salt Lake Tribune
The result is a funny and sometimes touching docu-comedy, sort of like watching your parents if they were in the middle of a Woody Allen movie.
| Original Score: 3/4
Top CriticFaux documentary, home movie or unexpurgated family therapy? The Talent Given Us, a funny, surprising ride with a mercurial New York clan, is all three.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
[A] one-of-a-kind movie that sends the family road-trip genre happily spinning into these self-obsessed, overanalytical times; it's National Lampoon's Vacation as re-imagined by Dr. Phil.
| Original Score: B+
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Deftly embraces some of the trademarks of documentary and cinema verité (using handheld cameras and non-actors, and shooting all on location) to effectively blur fact and fiction.
The notion that there is no escape from one's family is elevated-and ameliorated-by the inkling that the Wagners' story is, in fact, real.
What initially seems hard to watch, even excruciating at times, becomes hard not to, a fascinating fiction that seems to be more real than just about any actual documentary you can imagine.
| Original Score: 3/4
If you enjoy HBO's cult hit Curb Your Enthusiasm, you're almost guaranteed to enjoy this bawdy, heartbreaking, deeply discomfiting mockumentary.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A work of inspired, embarrassingly hilarious, uncomfortable fiction.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
St. Paul Pioneer Press
It's tough to describe The Talent Given Us, which is why it's fascinating.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Reeling Reviews
travels to some very unexpected places with its warts and all dissection of a family dynamic
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Boxoffice Magazine
The Talent Given Us is disarming in its fearless confrontation with mortality and the perpetual quest for nothing less than life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
It's fiction -- but it's fiction with the cutting edge of truth. It's so funny, it hurts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Orlando Weekly
The rhythm is that of a Christopher Guest mockumentary, and the acting is a near-perfect match.
Reel.com
After awhile, you start feeling as if you've been cooped up with the Upper West Side's answer to 'The Bickersons' for way too long. Yet in the end, The Talent Given Us represents a highly original filmmaking debut for Wagner.
| Original Score: 3/4
Los Angeles CityBeat
...confounding, funny, horrifying, and eventually irresistibly absorbing.
