Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Kamila Bell 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.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

federovsky I spent the whole time asking myself whether I was enjoying this. I tried, but I'm still not sure. I did appreciate the film making. The director clearly asked 'what can we do with the camera?' and the answer was 'anything'. There were many beautiful shots that had me hitting the pause button. A lot of it had an experimental feel - but that wasn't the problem. The story, based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro (perhaps they should have stuck to the original), felt like it was concocted by different people trying to outdo each other with silly ideas (tapeworms, beer-filled glass legs, sleeping in the snow, a character based on Gavrilo Princip - you quickly stopped asking why) - but that wasn't the problem either.The film might have been a collaboration between David Lynch, Orson Welles, Eisenstein, and the Brothers Quay - each of them disagreeing what the film should be about. It was worth trying. I quickly got used to the extremely smudgy effect - as if the lens had been smothered in vaseline - and I appreciated Isabella Rosselini (looking and sounding like her mother) and the big-eyed Maria de Madeiros.The backdrop was a music contest between international contestants to find the world's saddest music. The face-off heats was pure Python but it was all kept strangely distant. There were several problems: the emotional drama between the father and the two sons was dreary, as such issues always are. Secondly, it wasn't funny, and that was because it was all art and no emotional intelligence. Thirdly, it said nothing. It was full of ideas, but they were all microscopic, worked out at scene level - or even frame level. The whole thing put together didn't add up to anything. In the end, the images were everything, and that is always going to be disappointing.

Hitchcoc There are times when I haven't got anything witty to say about a film. I leave this one with the result of having seen something totally unique. I mean, put this one in a genre. Since I didn't really care if they ever found out what the saddest music in the world was (no matter what; it would be a disappointment), I found myself seeing a grouping of bizarre characters and enjoying them as if it were a kind of freak show. I don't even mean that in a judgmental sense. It had that David Lynch nightmare quality. Whatever transpired transpired. If one is looking for closure, I guess there is a kind of disastrous entropy here. Suffice it to say, when one has so much sadness, the movie becomes the saddest music in the world; life becomes the saddest music in the world. This is certainly worth a look. The cinematography is amazing and that's probably enough.

david-1976 Like one of the Canadian commentators who wrote about this film, I think it presents a valid argument for a "0" (where "0" equals caca) rating. I don't need to restate the "plot" here and I can't put in any spoilers because the whole thing is spoiled.Maddin thinks that putting Vaseline on a camera lens makes things look retro. Bob Guccione thinks that Vaseline on a camera lens makes naked girls in white stockings look sexy. Maddin thinks that set designs that include a lot of "M" based shapes will make people think of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." People writing about this film applaud its bow to expressionism. Well, expressionism was better done by the expressionists; the same director who made "Metropolis" spent most of his career making stinkers like "Rancho Notorious," and imitating early cinema "looks" is only interesting for so long. One could only wish it was actually shot on the old nitrate stock so that it could be badly stored.The actors do what passes as acting, in a sort of an imitation of an imitation of grand guignol. The two female leads have interesting faces, but do nothing that resembles acting. Isabella Rossellini demonstrates one thing: she actually looks sort of like her better-looking mom, and that she chooses vehicles like the tiresome movies made by her dad, which today I find painful to watch.The DVD contains three shorts that are much more amusing than the film they accompany (especially "Sissy Boy Slap Fest"), and the two "about the film" features have a "look-at-me-I'm-wonderful" air about them, narrated by some idiot who obviously would like to do a one-man "evening with Vincent Price" show in a bathhouse.Gee: did I like this movie? I was prepared to; I thought the premise was interesting and the thought of Rossellini as a concupiscent double amputee might be funny, but the product ends up looking like something made up by stoned frat boys who think they're really, really, really witty.Yeah: if you like this movie you probably also think Baz Lurhman is a genius, too. Pass the sedatives, please.

Claudio Carvalho In 1933, in Winnipeg during the American Great Depression, the legless baroness of beer industry, Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini), promotes a contest to choose the saddest music in the world and find where the real drinkers are. People come from all parts of the world, including her former lover Chester Kent (Marc McKinney) representing USA with the nymphomaniac amnesic Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros); his brother, who misses his dead son and his vanishing wife, Roderick Kent / Gravillo the Great (Ross McMillan), representing Serbia; and his father and the man who sever her legs in a car accident, Fyodor Kent (David Fox). During the competition, Roderick finds his missing wife."The Saddest Music in the World" is certainly one, if not the most, of the weirdest movie I have ever seen. This is the first work of the Canadian director Guy Maddin that I have watched and I found this flick really bizarre. In an atmosphere of nightmare, the surreal story uses the approach of the dramatic "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" but like a dark comedy instead. The cast and the cinematography are excellent, but I did not like this very unconventional and grotesque story. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): Not Available