LouHomey
From my favorite movies..
Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
SparkMore
n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
Derry Herrera
Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
nitoaiaalexandra
For me this movie I would say is a slow discovery into a gray area of human life. Even tough the movie is full with moments of silence it offers surprising moments of laughter, due to, let's call it, an empathic humor. The beginning and the end are connect, each story, of each character unfolds in a very tender way...as if it woun't dare the chance to scare you...somehow.
Anthony Iessi
It's absolutely, beautifully edited, and impressively written. Christopher Plummer is awesome in this. The father, son story mixed with the whole idea of his own father coming out later in his life is an interesting touch that makes Beginners stand out among other dramas out there. It's an LGBTQ friendly picture, that truly packs a punch for everyone all around. That scrappy dog is adorable too! But the problem was, any time Plummer wasn't on screen, i tuned out immediately. The romance between McGregor and the french girl bored me to death.. I apologize, I do.. It's just not my cup of tea. It's not a film I'd advise against, for anyone however. There's a lot of praise to go around.
luke-a-mcgowan
The first fifteen or so minutes of Beginners was full of such sweet promise that I couldn't wait to tuck into the rest of the movie. Ewan McGregor and Melanie Laurent have beautiful chemistry and the performances are even more beautiful because Melanie Laurent's character has laryngitis and she communicates only with her eyes, smile and notepad. The little dog, Arthur, is a delight whenever he's on screen, and he has huge chemistry with his owner. There's a few incredibly well written lines, especially Mills' decision to place dialogue captions over Arthur's piercing eye contact. Christopher Plummer has a very showy part as a life-loving, cancer-stricken, openly gay old man. That, and the fact that 82 year old Plummer had only chalked up a single nomination in his career, are the reasons he won the Oscar in 2011. That's not to say that Plummer isn't good, because he does a good job, but compared to performances like Jonah Hill (Moneyball) as well as unnominated work by Ryan Philippe (The Lincoln Lawyer), Stellan Skarsgard (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and half the cast of Midnight in Paris, Plummer comes up short. His performance in Danny Collins is far superior in every way.This film had no business being 105 minutes long. Some things that are sweet at first become grating. Even Melanie Laurent can't keep me engrossed in the film as she and McGregor go through their inevitable love story. The editing of the film does much to create confusion. I don't know why this film is set in 2003, but for a viewer the timeline jumping can be confusing if we don't know that 2003 is the film's present day. Beginners serves as a reminder than Melanie Laurent is a treasure who should be in more movies, but little else.
georg-60
Although I use IMDb a lot, I think this is only the second or third review I have ever written in at least 10 years. I usually don't feel that I have a lot to add to the many useful reviews and in this case, too, my points have more or less been made already, but I feel that it is impossible for me to not add my voice to those who want to warn their fellow human beings about this pretence of a film. We get to learn about this guy whose parents have just died and his Dad, who lived slightly longer, came out to be gay after his Mum's death. So he's all really depressed (not that he's an orphan, he's actually in his thirties) and spends his days working on sad cartoons, looking sad, feeling sad and wondering why this whole world is such a sad place. The word "sad" crops up about every two minutes and must be the most widely used word in the entire film, both spoken and in writing. Now, before you feel too sorry for this bloke you should understand that he's got a great house, a good job, a few friends and, wait for it, a really hot girl friend (why she is attracted to him is anyone's guess). But when they move together, he can't even enjoy this but keeps being sad about, err, honestly, I don't know about what, he just is sad for the sake of it. You could think that this is a film about clinical depression as mental illness (just like A Beautiful Mind being about schizophrenia), but there is no hint of that and I don't think it is meant to be. What it is meant to be I have not figured out but it does achieve nothing except for being a complete empty, trite and shallow bore.
