Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Amy Adler Margit (Nastassia Kinski) and Peter (Tony Goldwyn) live in Hungary during the early fifties. As Peter relates, a good deal of his friends have been sent to prison, for no good reasons, and his publishing business shut down. In addition, Margit experienced a traumatic loss which changed her forever. Therefore, they make plans to escape from communist Budapest and immigrate to America. They plan to take their two daughters along but a last minute, horrendous glitch makes it necessary for them to leave their one year old daughter, Suzanne, behind and in the care of a peasant farm couple in the Hungarian countryside. Climbing under barbed wire and around spotlights, they make their escape with their older daughter. Yet, understandably, when they make it to Los Angeles, Margit and Peter never stop writing letters to government officials, in order to secure the immigration of their little lost girl. Suzanne, meanwhile, loves her adoptive parents and simple home. Yet, when she is six, Suzanne is torn away from the only mother and father she knows and sent to America to meet and live with her blood relatives. After such turmoil for everyone, will happiness follow? This is one great movie that will have you crying at the beginning, the middle, and the end. It is based on a heartbreaking true story and it is certainty that any viewer will be tremendously moved by its happenings. The cast is stupendous, with Kinski and Goldwyn doing a wonderful job as the brave but sorrowful parents. Scarlett Johanssen plays Suzanne as she ages, and she is terrific, but so is the little lady who plays the younger version left behind in Hungary. Then, too, the settings, costumes, cinematography, script and direction are all top notch. In summary, no one who loves motion pictures should really miss this film. It has a story that grabs the viewer by the heart and never, ever lets go.

zoltanbarabas Like a Hungarian would, I wept all the through the film. Eva Gardos masterfully captured the pain of having to leave your own country, whether as adults or as a child. She crafted a wonderfully paced, written, acted and directed film. If her goal was to create a sense of longing for a bygone home, she hit a home run.I met Eva in Budapest in the late 1990s, when she was editing Andy Vajna's triumphant producing return to Hungary, "A Miniszter félrelép" (aka "Out of Order"). She let me read the screenplay of Hungarian Rhapsody as she was developing it for production. I liked the story, and imagined it coming to life on the screen. Almost a decade later, I finally got a chance to see the film. She stayed true to her story, and delivered an emotionally powerful personal film.I must admit that I am a Hungarian by paternal parentage, and thus very biased. 'Au contraire,' I am also a filmmaker, and can sometimes be critical. However, I can honestly say that Eva has created a film with universal emotional resonance.I truly hope that she continues to make such powerful films.

noralee "American Rhapsody" is an exceptionally well-written, acted, and directed Lifetime TV/Hallmark Hall of Fame-like movie. Based on the life of the debut writer/director Eva Gardos, the movie adds the immigrant refugee perspective to the teen-age rebellion genre. While I can't know if the black-and-white scenes in 1950's Hungary are portrayed accurately, the Kodachrome sights and sounds of growing up in '50's and '60's suburbia are among the most acutely portrayed I've ever seen in the movies. While my parents weren't the ones with foreign accents--it was my grandmother-- boy do I remember that making me different from the white bread around me. Scarlett Johannsson turns in another stellar performance, as in "Ghost World." This is Natassja Kinski's best role in years, and Tony Goldwyn does fine in the sympathetic paternal role that Aidan Quinn usually does. Even the kid who is "Grace" in TV's "State of Grace" is apt. All this quality helps to overcome the sentiment and nostalgia, and the creator does avoid the didacticism of most heart-warming TV movies on the same subject of reconciliation.A fine PG-13 family movie, though I would have liked to see more of what Gardos said in an interview that in her real life rebellion "I did worse."(originally written 8/11/2001)

jim If anyone can watch this heartbreaking tale without crying, you must have a heart of coal. Natasha, Scarlet, the war between Mom and daughter, the trip to Hungary, her reunion with the farm couple who adored her, oh my God. I saw this first in Santa Monica with a male friend who is a stolid and Stoic Estonian , and he sobbed. A movie of great passion and love. When I want to cry I watch it again.