Product Details

• Actors: Zooey Deschanel, Paul Schneider, Patricia Clarkson, Shea Whigham, Danny McBride
• Directors: David Gordon Green
• Writers: Paul Schneider, David Gordon Green
• Producers: Derrick Tseng, Jean Doumanian, Kimberly Jose, Lisa Muskat
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: August 19, 2003
• Run Time: 108 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000A02YI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #344,664 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

You'd think moviemakers would have run out of new ways of capturing the trials and joys of young love--but director David Gordon Green finds a fresh take in All the Real Girls, a bittersweet small-town romance. By leaving out the usual humdrum exposition of a courtship story, Green cuts right to the little moments that form the high and low points of a budding relationship. It's an impressionistic style aided by the wonderfully spontaneous and unpredictable acting of Paul Schneider (who also co-scripted) and Zooey Deschanel--who look like they're improvising, even though they're not. As in Green's excellent debut feature George Washington, a small town serves as an atmospheric backdrop--this place looks a couple of decades shy of the 21st century. The mosaic approach makes the film play like a collection of memories, someone's first love recalled with fondness and just a bit of regret. --Robert Horton

From The New Yorker

For his follow-up to "George Washington," the young director David Gordon Green has turned his gaze upon a quiet mill town in North Carolina. You can tell the place is quiet because Paul (Paul Schneider) enjoys a reputation as its most carousing and cavalier stud. In fact, Paul is a nondescript time-waster of twenty-two, a blunt boy whose best friend is really his mother (Patricia Clarkson). Having tasted and discarded half the local womenfolk, Paul is nonplussed when he finds himself falling for, and then two-timed by, Noel (Zooey Deschanel). Green presents this as an education of the heart, a lyrical act of persuasion that is backed up by random shots of sunsets and tumbling creeks. To the rest of us, it looks like comeuppance. Why the sweetly unreadable Noel should hang around the place a minute longer is anybody's guess. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uneasy young love on a Sunday morning in Carolina, March 3, 2003

By 

Samuel McKewon (Lincoln, NE) - See all my reviews

"All the Real Girls" lurks, and it lurks, and it lurks, until it haunts. It is a messy romance movie, a little cool to the touch, a little wrapped up in itself. But the effect is bone-rattling.

I won't say much -- and I am not a planted reviewer -- but the movie confirms the arrival of David Gordon Green as a serious, in-the-game filmmaker. His pervious film was "George Washington," and it, too, was a messy tale of heroism, gothic pain and love and mortality. It was also the most visually striking film aside from "Dancer In the Dark" that I have seen in some time.

"All the Real Girls" does not have the epic power that movie possessed -- "George Washington" is out of time, out of mind -- but it has a more cohesive, enjoyable narrative, it is not as weirdly symbolic and, most importantly, it's about adults. I recommend it highly, even if I think the sum of the parts do not transcend the parts themselves. I await the moment when Green makes a whole film, start to finish, possibly without a script he has written. His talent is unique and immense.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars SPOTS, March 1, 2003

By 

MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Paul (Paul Schneider) is the kind of good looking, teddy bear, cuddly, slow talkin', sly bad boy that women adore and fall hard for. And he's taken advantage of this like most guys of his ilk and has earned a well deserved bad rep for loving and leaving `em; which is particularly sticky for Paul because he lives in a small, going to seed town in middle America in which Everyone knows Everyone else... and they all know Paul's business.
Paul meets Noel (Zooey Deschanel) and he decides to change his spots and, treat her with respect and thereby repent and follow the straight and narrow, as it were. Noel has other ideas, though.
David Gordon Green, the director and writer of "All The Real Girls" has structured this movie in a very laidback, molasses in the summer manner and has cut the film into many short scenes: some with dialogue, many without. He's after the long term, not the immediate effect of these images to have their impact and for the most part he succeeds; even though the first 15 minutes of the film is hard going, as we don't know what he is trying to do and the stiffness of the actors and their delivery of the dialogue begins to get irritating.
Yet, the most touching scenes in this film are those between Paul and his Mom (Patricia Clarkson), Paul and his Uncle and Paul and his friends. His friends, all of them men in their 20's, are guys who are not afraid to open up emotionally to each other. All of these scenes are so warm and natural that they seem improvised. In fact, Gordon shows that these people, though under-educated but obviously endowed with an extraordinary amount of horse sense, have an intelligent and insightful awareness of their emotions and an appreciation of all the relationships in their lives. These scenes crackle with truth and nobility.
In many ways "All The Real Girls" owes a lot to the French Nouvelle Vague in that it is the accumulation of the images and the dialogue that ultimately hits you with it's intended effect: most scenes do not have a climax as the director builds his arsenal of scenes and moods. We are so used to the very literal, linear film that this style of filmmaking makes us antsy for the director to "get on with it." But Green is not making "XXX" here...he's trying to tell a subtle, personal love story and he is not in one bit of a hurry to do it.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A film for those who love life, March 18, 2003

By 

Jonathan Warner (Homewood, IL United States) - See all my reviews

David Gordon Green follows up his stunning success, "George Washington" (2000), with his second feature, "All the Real Girls," a film so exceptional, I want to thank him for making it. Never has stinging heartbreak been so vivid, so ethereal, and yet so grounded.

We're immersed in the Carolina countryside, the smoky mountains, sun-dappled faces, playgrounds, lakes and rivers, scrap yards, the shattered remains of a town, filled with people who have no dreams, except that which holds them closest - family and love. "Girls", at heart, is a sincere love story concerning Paul (Paul Schneider) and Noel (Zooey Deschanel). Their love deliberately avoids the clichés that most Hollywood films embrace, and instead, goes for the heart and the gut. Green sets a tone of longing and loss, feeding the mounting power of the story, but he also mixes in some unforced comedy; this is life and it feels real. Schneider and Deschanel give two varied and distinctive performances; they deserve much praise for the success of this film.

Tim Orr's cinematography adds warmth and texture; he is fascinated with nature, and understands that our environment induces emotional reactions. My chest was in knots, and I soaked it up. I reveled in knowing that resolutions are elusive, that love exasperates, that films this good appear once in a blue, Carolina moon, that "All the Real Girls" is a masterpiece.