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Really Surprised!

As Good As It Gets

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This is surprisingly the one of the worst movie I've watched in last six months. Surprise ,cos IMDb point is 7.5,Omer Sharif is on cast.I thought Turkish Muslim supermarket owner Ibrahim is pedophilia...but no he is so good man that he gives Jewish guy to read Koran.This movie stinks of religious propaganda and surprisingly is a French film.I think movie made to sell Islamic countries.Anyway stupidity not only what they try to em- pose ,film itself consist of many illogical things like Ibrahim shuts dawn his shop to take the boy to Turkey with a tiny car from France to Turkey.Actually he buys this car for him.He catches him stealing but not acts etc.It is total time wasting to watch this movie.

In reading some of the comments here, I wondered if I had seen the same movie.We are being told a story that consists entirely of Momo's memories, impressions and, possibly, fantasies of when he was growing up.So it seems strange that, for example, some reviewers complain here that there is not enough formal comparative religion or, God/Allah/Yahweh help us, that the film is antisemitic.I also wondered why no-one (apparently) mentioned what Momo found inside M. Ibrahim's Koran (which surprised and intrigued me) and what that might mean.The message boards didn't help much -- and there was more ranting about more or less nothing and "facts" that seems unlikely, to say the least.Then I found the author's site and things started to make a lot more sense.Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt tells us that Momo and Monsieur Ibrahim are two people who pass unnoticed through the world. Momo is an only child with no mother, and a father who barely deserves the name of 'father', too sunk in depression to take care of his son and bring him up, or teach him and hand on to him a taste for life and its principles. As for Monsieur Ibrahim, the only thing anyone asks of him is that he give them the correct change. Both man and boy change their lives as they get to know one another. Their encounter is a marvelous enrichment.The author notes that there has been a lot of verbiage about the fact that the child is Jewish and the grocer Muslim -- "Rightly so. It was a deliberate move to create them like that. I set out to prove something and be provocative. What I wanted to prove was that in many places in the world (European capitals, ports, American cities, North African villages), people of different religions from different backgrounds live together in harmony. In Paris, Rue Bleue, the road where this story takes place and where I once lived and which definitely isn't blue, was largely inhabited by Jews with a few Christians and Muslims. They all shared not only the same street, but daily life, their joys, discontents and conversation. Friendships or mutual understanding developed among these people who came from just about everywhere, either geographically or spiritually. In this unpretentious quartier down from Montmartre, I felt I was living somewhere rich and burgeoning, where cultures met, took an interest in each other and joked about their differences."Also, when Momo is handed Monsieur Ibrahim's old Koran, he finds what was in it -- dried blue flowers. The Koran is the text but it is also what Monsieur Ibrahim has placed in it -- his life, his way of reading, his interpretation. According to the author, "spirituality is not about repeating sentences parrot-fashion, but about grasping the meaning and understanding the concept and shades of meaning, the implications. True spirituality is only worthwhile when obedience and freedom are balanced".There is a quite a bit more that you may find useful and interesting - search "Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt" if you want to explore further.

" Monsieur Ibrahim " is a touching film which tells the tale of Moses, played by Pierra Boulanger, a 14 year old Jewish boy living in Paris during the 1960'. Abandoned to the ambivalent care of his father by an equally absent mother, Moses strays into the world of the Teenager and yearns to enjoy his budding maturity. Befriended by 'the Arab' played by Omar Sharif, who is a Muslim, the innocent teen is instructed, advised and counseled on the secrets of life. Somewhere between the Koran and the amorous attentions of Parisian prostitutes, the boy learns that shoplifting and sex are incidental. What is confusing is the fact the director and his film were not attacked, burned, vilified and morally assaulted by outraged Feminist groups from European countries and America. Had this film been about a fourteen year old girl, having sex with a half dozen adults, then befriended by a foreign older man who then adopts, and takes her East, Christian groups would have assailed it as child pornography. But as it was a boy, the film garners little of their attention and slips quietly into film history as a blending of cultures and the honoring of a special tradition

I like the simplicity of this movie. No expensive sets, no complicated dialog, no beautiful stars. The co-dependence of youth and old age is beautiful. The young boy learns how to smile and win. His estrangement from his father and his new found lust for sex have been effectively captured. The old man makes peace with his impending death. The movie has some pearls of wisdom. Its a never ending cycle - all rivers flow into the sea - into the immensity. Its not what you get, its what you give that makes you rich. And no one can take those riches away from you. I wish more reel had been spent on the car drive from France to Turkey, instead of just showing some clouds floating by.