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Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

While parts of the film are quite interesting, there are so many problems with it that I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone. First, there are many prolonged scenes from plays in the beginning of the film that don't seem to help the picture along. It was as if they had the footage and used it as padding. A few shorter shots would have clearly sufficed to explain to the audience that the leading man was a respected leading man on the French stage. Second, the camera work was awfully strange. Some might find it artsy, while others might be annoyed by the seemingly amateurish style. For example, many times the camera was static and the characters walked in and out of the shot. I assume it was to give the movie the style of a play, but to me it just looked like they left the camera on and left it. Third, the movie did not appear to have an ending or much of a buildup to it. It just ended very abruptly. Fourth, and finally, the relationship with the man and his grandson seemed poorly developed and could have used more screen time.Overall, the film needed to be hashed out more and seemed greatly in need of editing and revisions.

Watching this film is like watching mud dry. Obviously I have a definite prejudice but its distinctly like "About Schmidt", another snorer in which absolutely nothing happens. I found it impossible to care about what happened with these characters other than to hope, as the film progressed, that they didn't linger in old age any longer than necessary. There were many extraneous scenes (the old actor walking, lingering on subsidiary characters in bars and coffee shops) as if these added in any way to advancing the plot or developing character. There appears to be an audience for films of this type but it is so far from important films about the challenges of advancing age like "Wild Strawberries", "Men With Guns" or "Ikiru", as to be a parody.

it might be a spoiler I walked out of the cinema and I felt joy, overwhelming feeling of happiness. The movie has (had on me) such a positive impact. So I'm walking completely bemused rewinding the movie in my head. And I realize it is a sad, sad story. So sad.But I don't feel sad, I still feel peacefully calm. And I wonder: how does one make such a sad story, not getting remotely near pathetic and by far surpassing sad, making it.positive? I'm still rewinding the film trying my best to remember every scene, because each one is amazing, but I can feel my forgetfulness creeping up on me. I only had that one chance to see it, on this movie festival. I never got to cinemas, I wasn't expecting it to. Thus it will never get to video-clubs or video-stores (in my country, anyway).The movie is about life. As simple as that. All the little things we do, so trivial, yet so true. Like the habits we hold on to, or admiring the new shoes you just bought. That is the most beautiful scene for me. He meets his agent for a drink. They are sitting in a café, talking, chatting. But all throughout the conversation the camera is set a level lower. Not above the table, on their faces, but below the table, on their legs. Because he just bought a pair of new shoes. And his legs can't keep still. He is looking at them from this angle, admiring from that one. We all do that. For that brief period while something is new our eyes just keep glancing at it. We all do that, but we just don't pay attention. This is just a fragment of what you will find in this magnificent movie. It is a work of art. If you ever get a chance to see it, don't miss it.Unless, of course, you like all the same Hollywood movies that have a world saving plot, but are ever so completely empty, in which case this movie is far beyond your comprehension and you will find it meaningless, plotless, boring and painfully slow.

Anyone who thinks this movie is boring is a horse's ass who should stick to car chase movies. This is a brilliant, moving, and subtle film that is all the more poignant because, it's director being a nonagenarian, it could well be his swan song, and that of its 76 year old principal as well. De Oliveira, like his lead character, will not compromise his principles by dumbing down his material. Much of the film is silent, i.e., with no dialogue precisely because it is a film, a visual medium, not a play. The done is set by De Oliveira's daring opening, which consists of its actor-character enacting the finale of an Ionesco play, which goes on for over 15 minutes. A daring move that pays off because, perhaps predictably, what happens in the play is a predictor of what is to come. The film is not unlike King Lear, in that it stresses the sadness of seeing one who once had greatness, and who still has flashes of it, in decline and perhaps at the end of his powers. It is a sublime meditation on the inevitability of death and the foolishness of fighting it. A minor masterpiece.Rating: 9/10