Average Rating: 7.1/10
Reviews Counted: 78
Fresh: 67 | Rotten: 11
Despite its morbid subject matter, Wilbur is a charming and often funny film.
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Critic Reviews: 26
Fresh: 20 | Rotten: 6
Despite its morbid subject matter, Wilbur is a charming and often funny film.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 4,987
Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig, the writer and director of the 12th Dogme 95 film, 2000's critically acclaimed Italian for Beginners, presents this comedy drama starring Jamie Sives and Adrian Rawlins as brothers Wilbur and Harbour. When their mother died early in their lives, it became up to Harbour to keep tabs on Wilbur, the younger and chronically depressed of the two siblings. Now in their thirties, their father has passed away, leaving them to take over the family's used book store. It is
Mar 12, 2004 Limited
Dec 28, 2004
ThinkFilm Inc
All Critics (87) | Top Critics (28) | Fresh (69) | Rotten (11) | DVD (6)
Pretty enjoyable.
Wilbur has the ability to suck you in, to make you cheer on the strangest of indulgent families.
This is one special movie.
Though Scherfig is still partially enrolled in the Dogme school, her movie finds a happy balance with its equally adept eye for wide-screen composition and the raw complexity of real human emotion.
Here is a movie that appeals to the heart while not insulting the mind or forgetting how delightful its characters are.
...the kind of picture one is more inclined to admire than embrace
Lone Scherfig has masterfully combined rather dark, serious topics with a little humor and a lot of humanity.
Scherfig presents the message with a creative flair that will appeal to indie film lovers who appreciate well drawn characters
Feels schematic, contrived and less genuine.
Wilbur is less about adherence to cinematic restrictions than it is about characters, and Scherfig was able to coax subtle, comic performances from her actors.
Although at times too low-key, Wilbur is a humorous and strangely uplifting film about death and dying.
More plainly dreary than morosely captivating... a movie that seems rather irresolute about exactly what sort of feelings it's hypothetically meant to be conjuring up.
It's certain parts of the film that I enjoy rather than the film as a whole.
You may laugh, but you won't always like yourself for it.
Amid the bloody pulp that is cinema this season, the director of Italian for Beginners offers a fresh look at the old death wish.
Mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, very original story and well cast (even Shirley Henderson is very good here. Not nearly as "screetchy" as normal - I am sure she puts that voice on!), also quite funny in a dark way thanks to Julia Davis (I can never take her seriously. I just see Jill from NIghty Night
November 1, 2008Super Reviewer
There is something very disjointed about Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself. It almost feels as if it is in a timeless no mans land, void of any distractions or indeed the outside world. Maybe that's why it works so well. The Danes don't half make some great films, Lone Scherfig ticks all the boxes a director should as far
May 4, 2011Super Reviewer
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