Customer Reviews

Burning Annie

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This romantic comedy captures the feel of college life and romances. The characters are quirky but believable and the story doesn't rely on a contrived Hollywood ending. While the production value doesn't rival Titanic, it is fine for an indie film from a group of young talent.

Give it a look before watching Annie Hall with a significant other!

Burning Annie is witty and touching. It ends with an uncertain future for Max, jusy like when we graduated from college. A wonderful chic chick flick. You will watch it at least twice.

This dark romantic-comedy is probably the best depiction of college life I've seen since Baumbach's Kicking & Screaming. (And, this time, the actors are actually college age!)

There are some in-jokes and nods to Woody Allen fans, but even my wife appreciated the movie without having seen Annie Hall first. This is a great film to see for a mellow night when you don't want violent action or gross out comedy. And there probably hasn't been as great of a soundtrack to a low-budget indie film like this since the original Clerks. Well done!

I really enjoyed watching this film and I've never even seen Annie Hall before. The script is clever and the timing is great. :) Great for a movie night with friends.

I just saw this film this afternoon after I had bought it cheap months ago. What interested me about it was the plot, as I am a Woody Allen fanatic. I don't know why people have issues with this honestly, because this is done remarkably well. All the characters are interesting and give great performances. The chemistry is superb and was one of those films I was not checking the clock to see how much longer I had.

Yes, the film was done low budget and some of the technical work leads a lot to be desired, but so what? If the story and acting is superb in a film of this sort, i.e. a character study, it doesn't really matter. So, I highly recommend this to everyone who loves Woody Allen movies, who aren't so closed minded when a film has a low budget.

I was fooled into see Burning Annie by the reviews and festival awards mentioned on the cover. I'm here to save you from a similar fate.

This film is a failure on every possible level. The acting approaches the quality you'd expect from a high school drama club (note: "approaches"). That's also true of the production values generally--you get the sense that half of it was filmed in the director's parent's house on home equipment. The script is utterly limp, plodding aimlessly from scene to disconnected scene, with characters delivering confused non-sequiturs that thud from the screen and into your ears. And I should say "characters", since they barely rise to the level of caricatures, and don't even have the saving grace of being interesting in their shallowness. There's no tension, no dramatic flow, not much of anything to keep you from nodding off.

Worst of all for a comedy, there's not a genuine laugh to be had in the entire film. In fact there were times when Max was delivering what was evidently supposed to be a Woody Allen-esque riff, but the results were so flat and uninspired that I honestly started to wonder if the scene was intended as comedy at all. The humor isn't "low-key"--it's nonexistent.

The momentary glimpses of Annie Hall in the movie were like a breath of fresh air, and a reminder of just how badly this film failed to create anything worthwhile from its source material (or from the other great films it tried to quote visually or thematically, like Rushmore or Napoleon Dynamite). I'd rather have someone describe their vague recollection of the credit sequence of Annie Hall to me in Laotian than watch even a minute of this film again.

The very best I can say for Burning Annie is that it's usually inoffensive. And if it were just being treated as what it obviously is--an unpolished effort by amateurs--I'd say hey, nice try, and maybe someday you'll be able to make something like a real film. But the bafflingly positive reviews for it have left me wanting to warn off anyone else who might be suckered into wasting 95 minutes of their life. There are far too many great, good, and even mediocre films out there that deserve your attention before Burning Annie. There's just nothing here.

I hesitated giving this film a one star rating as I try to save that for films poorly made. But this movie is so consistently dull and uninspired throughout that I had to give it the lowest rating.
The story revolves around a college student who thinks "Annie Hall" is the greatest movie ever made and a bible for relationships. He finally meets a girl who changes his mind. Kind of a weak premise for a movie, but with a perceptive, humorous script played with passion you could make it interesting. Unfortunately this movie lacks all these ingredients and is quite tedious to watch.