7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's a winner!!, July 29, 2003
By A Customer
As a French teacher, I spend my summers off looking for and previewing French movies for my students for the following school year, and after quite a few duds this summer, I have found a jewel. This was a great movie, and I know I can easily show it to my students (they're high schoolers) with mininal moans and groans. This is a lovely film with a wonderful, moving story line, lots of humor and human interest. As other people before me have already described the plot, I won't go into details, but know that you won't be disappointed. Definitely worth the purchase or rental.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The train of life and much more, November 14, 2001
The comparison to Life is Beautiful is inevitable. The only similarity that I can see is that both are a comedy that encompasses the biggest horror in humanity: the Holocaust. Whereas La Vita e Bella is a one-man show, this is a story about a community that has to deal with the crisis in their own unique way.
When the Germans are approaching the little Jewish village in France, the village votes to purchase a train, a German train rather, and a group of the villagers would pretend to be German soldiers accosting the condemned Jews to the concentration camp. On their way to Russia and safety, one thing after another goes bad, there is the dissension in the rank by the "Communist Jews", there are a French soldiers who really think that the train is a real German train and try to bomb it to save the Jews. Then they meet up with real German soldiers and the adventure continues. Whether they make it or not, you would have to watch it yourself, I won't ruin your ending.
The comedy is rather heavy-handed, along with the amusing adventure, you learn about the passengers, their hopes and dreams. At times it almost falls into drama while quickly making a retreat back to the comedic genre. A light-hearted comedy this is not, at every misadventure they come to, as an audience, your heart jumps along. You wonder if they will make it past this obstacle. You predict that they will, since it is a comedy after all, then again you probably remember how Life is Beautiful ends. Can you really make a pure comedy out of such tragedy?
This is the aspect that keeps the movie rolling. The anticipation of what is going to happen next. The movie contains enough moments to keep you laughing. However, it is during the moments when nothing happens and the passengers deal with their own issues, that the movie gets interesting.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Romanians at their best, May 5, 2006
without being biased (since I'm Romanian) I have to admit that the movie is simply great! the comic part just wants to shift the accent from the extremely sad situation to a rather pleasent occuring... all the twists and turns give the movie its capability to keep you seated until you see what happened to them. like many other European movies it is a greatly phylosophical movie as well and it is far from the ordinary comercial movies that bring in the money for box offices.
the actors are great. the picture is also amazing...
WATCH IT!
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